


Blood of Ice

by armouredescort



Category: Castlevania (Cartoon), 悪魔城ドラキュラ | Castlevania Series
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Blood and Injury, Body Horror, Character Turned Into Vampire, F/M, M/M, Major Character Injury, No rape but noncon elements, Psychological Torture, Season 2 compliant, Spoilers, Stockholm Syndrome, Torture, Transformation, Trevor technically dies, Vampire!Trevor Belmont, dubcon, forced transformation, noncon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2019-08-06 10:35:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 19
Words: 35,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16386284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/armouredescort/pseuds/armouredescort
Summary: The final fight does not succeed. Trevor is captured and forcibly turned.





	1. Chapter 1

Their fight didn't last for more than five minutes once they entered the throne room.

Despite everything, they were not prepared. They had pushed through the castle itself, destroying any monster they found, Dracula's lieutenants, and thus whittled away at their energy, exhausting them before they could make it to the throne room.

There was no safe place to recover, their rest always disturbed by something or other. Defeating Dracula had to be all at once or not at all.

Alucard had managed to scoop Sypha into his arms as she fainted from using up the last of her magic. He looked haggard, eyes a hard, cold yellow rimmed with red, a sure sign he needed blood – and fast. His chest wound was bleeding again, Dracula having aimed a direct hit at the old scar, clawing the tissue open. Alucard hardly noticed that he was bleeding, his shirt turning dark as the blood blossomed.

Some of it smeared onto Sypha's robes. She came to again after a few moments, and it was a testament to her fighting spirit that she tried to stand up and rejoin the battle.

Trevor was not so lucky.

Dracula had moved too quickly, too sneakily, and Trevor found his feet leaving the floor, Dracula's cold hand wrapped around his throat. Trevor choked out an insult, and managed to crack the Vampire Killer against the only exposed skin he could find - Dracula's face and hands.

Even though his neck was screaming in protest, Trevor scrabbled his hands over his weapons belt only to find it empty. His sword was abandoned on the other side of the room, hilt deep in a demon that looked less gruesome covered in its own gore than naked. Trevor's daggers and throwing knives had already been used up while trying to keep Dracula on the defence as his companions lunged in to attack.

It was just him and the whip, and the whip was doing less and less damage as Trevor ran out of air, snapping more feebly every time.

From the corner of his eye he noticed Alucard put Sypha down, and start barrelling towards them. Sypha was unsteady, pale, and had no right to still be standing after draining herself so thoroughly. Yet she still stood.

She screamed, unleashing a shield of fire around Alucard. It was no use. Dracula merely had to flick his hand and Trevor's abandoned knives pulled themselves free of whatever surface they had struck, and turned to point at Alucard.

"One more step and I will impale you where you stand," snarled Dracula.

Alucard pressed on. His sword flew to his hand and he twisted, ready to strike his father down.

"A shame," said Dracula, and he twisted his hand tighter on Trevor's throat just enough that Trevor passed out.

The hunt was over, Trevor thought, and he had failed.

***

He hadn't thought he would awaken. When he did, he found that his waist, wrists and ankles had been bound in heavy manacles, and that he was kneeling before the throne. He tried to sit up and found that his chains were too short, presumably to stop him from running away.

His belts and armour had been stripped off, leaving him in his pants and shirt, stockings doing very little to protect his feet from the cold floor.

"Ah, Belmont. You're awake," came Dracula's booming voice.

It echoed and Trevor twisted around, trying to find the source. The throne room seemed still, devoid of life other than himself. Underneath him the flagstones were like ice, a sharp contrast to the heat pouring off his body, still warm from the fight. Not much time could have passed, then, only enough to bind him. His throat burned with the aftermath of being strangled, windpipes nearly crushed entirely.

The monsters from their fight had not yet been cleaned up, and there were large shards of ice scattered on the floor. No sign of Sypha or Alucard. Were they dead?

Trevor shook his head, trying to gather his thoughts. It hurt his throat, the movement somehow grating the damaged airways. It was distracting. He rasped, testing his voice by trying to clear it with a cough, winced and swallowed painfully.

He had to focus. Focus meant survival. He had to survive. He had to believe that Sypha and Alucard weren't dead, and that were devising a plan to free him right now.

Everything was hazy, swirling like a dream. If they were dead, Dracula would have wanted Trevor to see their bodies. If they had been captured there was no reason to torture them individually when the pain of seeing the others injured was far worse.

They had to have escaped. Even if Trevor didn't know how. Probably for the best so they could exploit it rather than have the secret pried from him by force.

They might still be in the castle. With Dracula preoccupied by Trevor, they at least wouldn't have to keep fighting Dracula.

Good. Even if Trevor was fated to die today, then at least they still had a chance to destroy Dracula for once and for all.

"I want to give you a gift," Dracula crooned, slipping out of the shadows.

It was a dangerous, silky tone, like a knife wrapped in cloth. Trevor was loathe to take a knife by the blade but if it meant that Alucard and Sypha had more time to escape, he would gladly throw his hands upon it.

"And here I thought it was tradition to present the lord with a gift, not the other way around," said Trevor.

God, his voice sounded worse than if he'd been drinking all night and then thrown up. Multiple times. Every word was an effort.

He lifted his head in defiance, even though the thick chains kept him hunched. Doing this much meant Dracula's attention was on him and not on the two people that had escaped.

Dracula smirked. Trevor was human. He was strong and fast, a sharp tactician, and the last of an ancient bloodline raised from birth to kill monsters, but he was not enough to escape. They both knew this.

"You have given yourself as sacrifice. It would be impudent of me not to take that sacrifice dearly," Dracula said.

In a blink, Dracula was in front of Trevor, sharp nails holding Trevor's face, threatening to pierce the skin if Trevor moved in any other way than what Dracula wanted. Trevor let his face be turned from side to side, the inspection methodical, precise, and agonisingly slow.

Trevor didn't think that vampires needed to breathe, so he was surprised when he felt a cold breath of air fluttering against his face. He realised that Dracula was smelling him. A slight wrinkle formed between Dracula's eyebrows, the crease exactly the same as when Alucard had breathed in too deeply next to Trevor after a day of sweating.

Served Dracula right.

Trevor didn't dare move, liking his face to stay exactly where it was – on his skull.

"You all have the same nose," Dracula mused. "Your sisters must have hated theirs, but I imagine they would have been just as fine of an example of Belmont beauty as you."

Trevor recoiled, taken off guard by the statement. His cheeks stung where Dracula's nails cut them. Dracula's eyes followed the trickle of blood down Trevor's cheek. It made a soft drip against his collar.

It kept falling, and Dracula's little power play speech paused for so long that Trevor was about to snap off a witty remark to get it going again. Not that he wanted to listen to Dracula rant, but it was preferable to the alternative of having his neck snapped as Dracula grew bored.

"Before you ask, yes, I keep tabs on your family, Belmont. I know everything about them. Who lived, who married whom, who has what family weapons, who is dead and how."

Trevor wanted to look anywhere but Dracula's face. Yet Dracula loomed, filling his vision, and he licked the droplets of blood off Trevor's cheeks. Dracula paused for a moment, as if taking in the taste of Trevor's blood, savouring it like a wine. He closed his red eyes, and when he opened them again to pin Trevor with their intensity, they were brighter somehow, like the colour of the blood had painted his eyes anew.

"I also know you're the baby of the family. You were never meant to wield the whip. You were an accident, an unplanned for child, a male heir born too late to protect the Belmont estate."

That was it. Trevor could not take it.

"Shut up," he growled. "You know nothing about my family."

"I know more than you," said Dracula. "And I will delight in preserving you so that the agony of your guilt can never be escaped."

"So you'll throw me into a dungeon until I die of old age?" rasped Trevor.

It felt like he was swallowing needles with every word.

Dracula smiled, and Trevor did not like the cruelty that hid in the firm, thin-lipped grin.

"And let you fade away to nothing? I said I was here to give you a gift."

Trevor was knocked backwards so fast that when he fell, he barely kept his head from cracking against the floor. Dazed by the air being forced from his lungs, he didn't have any sense left to struggle before Dracula pinned him down. The vampire lord had to be at least seven foot tall, if not taller, and used every inch of that height to keep Trevor still.

Trevor couldn't move, Dracula's strength completely trapping him, his hands slammed above his head so firmly that for a moment Trevor thought they had been broken. He wheezed as Dracula used his weight to pin Trevor's legs, yanking the chain around Trevor's waist so that it pulled tight, crushing against several bruises from the fight.

"If you wanted me on my back, you could have just said so," said Trevor, trying to move even a little.

Dracula tightened his grip and this time Trevor's wrists really did break.

"You bastard," snarled Trevor.

He spat in Dracula's face, and immediately regretted it. The bones crunched again, and he shrieked as they slid over one another, shattering and rendering both of his hands useless.

"They'll heal," said Dracula.

Trevor didn't know how they would heal, let alone cleanly. It would take magic to fix them.

"You've lost, Belmont. You're mine now."

The way Dracula said it made Trevor feel like he was a brand new toy and not a prisoner.

Then Dracula was closer, their bodies lying so closely together that Trevor could feel every detail of Dracula against him.

As Dracula's fangs extended further, Trevor tried to suppress the pang of fear he felt. It was only natural that he was afraid, adrenaline pumping through his veins by his terrified heart. Dracula smirked.

Then his teeth sank into Trevor's skin, and the adrenaline made it worse, pumping his blood directly to Dracula. It probably tasted like fear. Vampires probably thought that was a common taste. Dracula moaned, letting go of Trevor's useless hands, and clutching his body closer, lifting Trevor's torso in a twisted version of a lover's embrace.

"It is true," said Dracula, in between licking up the blood. "That tiny taste I had before cannot compare to the richness of Belmont blood when taken in full."

He bit again, and again, littering Trevor's neck with marks like a snake had attacked him.

Then Dracula bit his own wrist, and shoved the wound against Trevor's mouth.

"Drink," he commanded. "For this is my gift."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're now entering spoiler territory for season 2. I had a plot planned but now I'm adjusting it to be s2 compliant because I want to. I'll probably go back and edit chapter 1 to be a bit more in line with s2, but I had most of this chapter written prior to s2, and just added some lines here and there.

"We have to go back," said Sypha. "We have to go back, we can't leave him!"

She twisted in Alucard's arms, having being picked up again after Alucard's near miss with being staked by Dracula's magic. Alucard held tight, knowing that Sypha couldn't do anything against him, and that her magic was thoroughly depleted. Moving the castle to them had been more effort than she had let on. Any more and she would start burning up her own body in pursuit of retrieving Trevor.

They were still in the castle, but Alucard knew the way out. Or so he hoped. The castle had the strange and curious ability of never being quite the same twice, and over a year of being away from it had meant that it had shifted into something unrecognisable. Once, it had been warm and welcoming, a home, but now it was cold, miserable, and full of creatures that sought their demise.

"Alucard, stop! Why aren't you stopping? We can't leave him!"

Alucard powered on, and finally found what he was looking for: an exterior window. He peered out of it. It was high and he had never attempted to jump quite so far down to the ground with a passenger.

A rattling down the end of the hallway they occupied made Alucard's choice for him. Something was coming. Who knew what it was, but it sounded heavy and oddly hollow, a shuffling step that shook whatever chains that were draped over it. They didn't have the time or the power to deal with it. There was nowhere to hide.

Throwing Sypha's robe over her head so she wouldn't be hurt by broken glass, Alucard leapt.

***

The castle vanished.

It was there one moment, looming ominously like a shadow stretching for the twilight hours, and then there was a terrible crack as if the earth had split. It vibrated and warped, and gone in the next moment. There were scorch marks on the earth and debris from the displacement effect that teleported the castle, the only trace that it had existed in this time and place.

Sypha stared at the ground, her hands running over the edge where life turned into death. The dried grass crumbled.

"You left him," she said.

"We had to. Dracula had him," said Alucard.

He refused to call the man who had so easily tossed him away his father. They weren't the same. Alucard couldn't reconcile the knowledge that his father would and had committed mass murder to the happy childhood he'd had.

"You left him! Now we don't even know where he is because the castle up and fucking vanished!" Sypha screamed.

She whirled around, a dervish of fury, and shoved Alucard in the chest, trying to get some sort of rise out of him.

It was a challenge and Alucard wanted to scream, wanted to cry, but that part of him was so tightly locked up, bound in the slopes of his true name, that he could only watch Sypha's fury. The scorched ground started to smoulder again as Sypha paced angrily back and forth.

"We have the mirror," said Alucard.

"I can't pull the castle to us again. The archive would collapse, and Dracula knows that I can manipulate his home, so he'd be waiting for me to do it," said Sypha.

Her legs were shaking, heart still beating double time with the anxiety and stress of the fight, and her own fury. It wouldn't be long before she collapsed again. Even though she was so physically exhausted, it didn't stop her from glaring at Alucard when he didn't respond.

Alucard raised a hand placatingly, "The mirror is still useful."

Sypha scoffed. "At the rate it moves around we will never reach it in time before it up and vanishes again."

It seemed she was waiting for Alucard to come up with a plan. Beyond the mirror, Alucard had nothing. Locate the castle and rescue Trevor, certainly, but _how?_

"We need to secure the library," she said.

"The hole is rather big," said Alucard. "And I don't know how to make another sealing stone."

"Then we at least cover the hole so people don't get it into their minds to go exploring," said Sypha. "It's the last and only source of such extensive knowledge on monster hunting and magic, completely unique in that it is raw and uncensored by the Church, and I know you hate it as a temple to your destruction, but it is Trevor's only inheritance. He may not be able to read it or use it, but he will have children, and they will need it! You know as well as I that there's a whole vampire society out there, and killing Dracula will only poke the fire with a stick."

She took a breath, letting her words sink in, and then shoved at Alucard's chest. Being human, she had not the strength to actually push Alucard around, but he moved with her shove so she wouldn't hurt her wrists.

"Why won't you react? Are you happy Trevor is gone? Were we _wrong_ to trust you?"

The barrage kept coming, each question punctuated by an angry push or shove at Alucard's chest.

"I had no other choice," said Alucard. "I couldn't reach him."

"Then why leave the castle? I ask again: were we wrong to trust you? Trevor would gladly die for us – he's probably dead right now!"

Each question cut deeper than the human shoves.

"And he died alone, with nobody who would give his body the respect it deserves. Dracula will probably throw it into a furnace."

Alucard snapped, grabbing Sypha's hands to still them, his voice cracking, "I panicked. I panicked, I thought we'd be safer, I didn't think about the castle moving. I panicked and I forgot it could move."

Sypha went motionless, letting her wrists be held gently. Alucard was shaking ever so slightly, and he turned his face down and away.

"I didn't want to lose both of you."

He let go, walking towards the Belmont manor. Sypha found that she couldn't follow, her resolve crumbling against the well of Alucard's unfathomable loneliness.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some familiar faces.

The compulsion was strong, forceful, and Trevor fought it with every ounce of strength he had left, relying on his willpower to protect him. It felt like an iron band was closing around his head, squeezing tighter and tighter until he couldn't focus on anything but the pain.

"I said drink," said Dracula.

He shoved harder with his wrist, smearing his own blood over Trevor's lips. Trevor flinched, keeping his mouth so firmly shut that his jaw had started to ache. The compulsion scraped and clawed, looking for a way in, and testing every fault, until it found a crack and split him apart to his very soul.

That haze of compulsion made the blood smell sweeter and clearer than anything he had smelt before, tempting him with promises to slake a thirst that had been unknown to him until now. Dracula's eyes seemed huge, their redness hypnotic with the depths of his madness. Trevor felt rather than heard the rumble in Dracula's chest as he left out a chuckle, amused by the Belmont pinned underneath him.

"Drink. You must be thirsty," he crooned, and the switch from forceful to gentle was so smooth that Trevor almost obeyed from sheer habit.

He was thirsty. It had been a reasonable request to drink. But Dracula's wrist was still pressed against Trevor's lips, and Trevor's wrists were aching from their broken bones.

"Just a little. Then we can fix your wrists," said Dracula.

Trevor turned his head, squeezing his eyes shut against those haunting red slits that peered at him. He would not drink.

"Hm, then I suppose this will have to be done a little more traditionally."

One of Dracula's clawed hands pinched Trevor's nose.

Trevor's eyes widened, and he started to squirm, trying to get away from Dracula's fingers that kept him from breathing in. Dracula leant back, watching Trevor squirm as he used the hunter as a cushion.

"The thing about the human body is that it will always seek air. No matter how long you hold it, there will be that moment where you will need to breathe in. It's compulsion of another kind. Your body will not deny you this. And when you breathe it, it will be as if you were a drowning sailor, knowing that the first gulp of seawater will kill him but being unable to stop it from happening unless you break the surface."

Dracula pinched harder, making sure that Trevor couldn't breathe.

"And I will not let you break the surface."

Trevor could hold his breath for quite a long time. He trained himself to do it - there had been one too many times where he'd been caught out by rising water to not have trained himself. On a good day, he could hold it for five minutes. On a bad day, like when he'd been earlier caught off guard, he couldn't hold it at all, and now that his throat was very definitely damaged and his wrists were broken, he knew he could barely hold it for a minute.

He gasped at about the forty second mark, and felt Dracula push his wrist into Trevor's open mouth. He thrashed about as best he could, trying to get Dracula off him, but he couldn't stop the slide of blood into his mouth.

The lies had been right. It tasted nothing like blood at all, and everything like the magical cure for all of his desires. His throat and wrists didn't scream as much, their fires becoming embers, and Trevor gagged. He couldn't drink it, but he also couldn't stop drinking it. A soft, warm buzz, like a good jug of alcohol, filled him up, and it was becoming harder and harder for him to fight the desire to drink everything Dracula was giving him.

He vaguely noticed when Dracula let go of his wrists, bringing his other hand down to stroke and touch Trevor's face. Long claws whispered over Trevor's skin, raising gooseflesh, and the tenderness took Trevor by surprise, almost reflexively leaning into it.

It had been so long since anyone had touched him with even a scrap of kindness, with the aim to pay attention to him and him only.

"As quiet as a suckling kitten," said Dracula.

He lifted his wrist away.

"That should be enough for now. I would not let you be my –" Dracula paused, searching for the right word. His fingers twisted a lot of Trevor's hair around them as he thought. "– guest while unable to use your hands or speak. I suspect the struggle will be sweeter if drawn out."

Trevor couldn't focus on the words, the absence of fresh blood sparking anger in his chest as he tried to follow Dracula's wrists. Then, as he came back to his senses with an icy jolt of realisation, he flopped, trying to squirm his way free once more. His wrists and throat felt better already, something which he didn't want to think about "why."

"You-you beast," he growled. "What do you intend to do to me?"

Dracula raised an eyebrow and adjusted his perch on Trevor's lap. Humans were so small.

"Finish what I started," said Dracula.

He leant in, so close that he could press a kiss to Trevor's lips if Dracula so desired, and Trevor noticed how fine-boned Dracula'a face was, that if Dracula had been a normal man offering something more than kisses then Trevor would have accepted. But Dracula was a vampire and his torturer, and had done too much for Trevor to feel any sort of desire to please this man.

Looming so close, Trevor could see so much beauty in Dracula, soured by cruelty, carved away until there was nothing but sublime terror - somehow, Dracula was a natural force, turned unnatural by anger.

"However, I think I have other things to attend to first," said Dracula.

And like that, he vanished, a trail of red and black smoke the only indication that he was ever there in the first place.

Trevor exhaled, shakily, and mused that his chains had to have been broken in order to get his hands over his head during his encounter with Dracula. He frowned, trying to pull his wrists apart, but the chains seemed as strong as ever. The ones around his legs seemed to have not been damaged either.

No, they had to have broken! There was no way they could remain intact.

Before his eyes, he saw the chain move of its own accord, snaking over his body, and tightening around him, the shape and thickness of the chain becoming more delicate and flexible, like a jewellery chain of the finest craftsmanship. He yanked but it held strong, crisscrossing about until he felt his arms pulled back and bound up to his elbows, the rest of it forming some sort of harness that emphasised the shape of his body.

He thrashed about, and lost his balance as his legs were yanked together. Snarling, Trevor rolled onto his front and slid his knees up so he was kneeling. Before he could go anywhere, he felt a force slam into him, throwing him into the air. Smoke billowed around him, and phantom hands cradled him as they tied him to chains that were suspended from the ceiling.

Trevor didn't see her face, but he knew it was the Japanese vampire general that he thought Sypha had destroyed.

"My lord Dracula will return when he is ready," he heard her say, more like a howl on the wind that true words. "We look forward to your destruction."

Then she vanished and Trevor was left suspended from the ceiling, facing downwards so he could see the empty court.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dracula does get a bit frisky in this one.

"Hey," said Trevor.

The court was arranged before him and although Trevor heard every word, none of the words made sense. Probably some vampire dialect. The remaining generals were at the front of Dracula's audience, various troops lined up behind them in perfect square groups. Roughly one hundred and fifty regular vampire soldiers, the Forgemaster Trevor had heard Dracula call "Isaac", a female vampire dressed in a bright sari and gold jewellery, and the foggy vampire that didn't know when to throw in the towel. Not a single one bothered to look up.

"Hey, shitheads," said Trevor, raising his voice ever so slightly. "Don't you know that it's rude to leave guests out of the conversation?"

He tilted his head, not that it would do him any good to hear anything. He recognised some sounds and how they repeated, but nothing of use. The slow rotation of his prison was getting frustrating and if he moved, it would rock as well. It made thinking extremely difficult, and Trevor was vaguely slipping between languages as his brain tried to latch onto the vampire's speech. At least the bizarre set of knots and loops of chains around made him feel almost like he was lying on his belly.

Closing his eyes to steady himself, Trevor sucked in a breath, then out. There had to be some way of getting these pale overly self important ticks to listen to him.

Something particularly vile ran through his head in French.

It was too extreme. Also impossible considering his position of trussed up feature decoration.

Something less impossible but equally vile occurred to him.

"If you don't let me down, I daresay I'll piss on all of you from up here. I don't know what you needle-toothed dick chewers do, but humans need to use the lavatory once in a while."

Dracula's eyes snapped up to where Trevor was, and he seemed to lean to one side, slouching casually, bored even, and he stayed like that for so long that Trevor feared he would have to follow through on his threat.

Then his finger twitched, and Trevor felt the lurch as he freefell at least fifteen feet before being yanked hard by an invisible force, and coming to a rough halt, still hanging in his chains. They tightened, pressing on his full bladder (Trevor hadn't been lying about needing to piss), and he felt the air leave his lungs with a quiet "oof".

He opened his eyes and found himself face-to-face with an extremely angry vampire court.

Then the world spun again, considerably faster than the slow, unforgiving waltz of being tied up by himself.

Dracula grabbed Trevor's chin.

"How dare you try to disturb the proceedings of this court. You are nothing like your ancestors, you might as well have been their feral pet dog than an actual child of the Belmont line."

"Tell me that I'm lying," said Trevor idly.

He knew that he was poking the sleeping beast – well, more like running up to the beast and walloping it with a sledgehammer – yet it was the only way to get Dracula to pay any attention to his needs. His throat still twinged and protested at yelling so soon after it had been crushed, but Dracula's blood had completely taken care of his broken wrists. Trevor didn't want to think too closely about the implications of why he had healed so quickly, and instead focused on getting Dracula to let him go to a lavatory.

Dracula scowled, which seemed like his default expression after the one of casual disinterest. Trevor found it strange that Dracula seemed so content to let the others fight on his behalf. In all of the Belmont tomes the authors had spoken in awe of Dracula's tactical ability that it seemed odd that he was so passive now.

Not that Trevor wanted to fight Dracula who was more motivated – as proven by his first encounter with Dracula, he was vastly underprepared.

"It would do you some good to be humiliated," Dracula snarled. "But I don't feel like cleaning up the mess you'll make."

He let go of Trevor's chin, pointed at a fledgling vampire, and beckoned them over. They all looked the same in their armour and hoods that Trevor didn't know whether they were male or female. Not that it really mattered.

Dracula reached up and somehow the chain that tied Trevor had an end to it. When Trevor looked up, he could see a length of chain dangling from the ceiling, but no signs of any breaks.

"Take this animal, and let him do whatever it is he wants to do. Then dump him in the baths. I will be along presently," ordered Dracula.

He tossed the chain to his fledgling, who didn't so much as move but shimmer for a moment as their hand reached out and caught the end of the chain. It immediately looped around their arm and torso, effectively trapping them with Trevor.

"If you happen to die, then that's your fault for not being careful enough," said Dracula.

Trevor knew instinctively that those words were meant for the vampire attached to him. He glanced at Dracula, caught him slipping into his bored expression once more, and wondered what Dracula was playing at.

***

The baths were magnificent, as it turned out. A large, open space with soaring ceilings and metres of gauzy, iridescent fabric hung from the ceiling, separating the various areas with only their thin veils. The floor was tiled with tiny squares of red, orange, jade, and green, spiralling and tessellating with patterns that were too big to appreciate when standing so close to them. The water was steaming hot in some areas and cold in others, some coloured with unknown liquids, turning them bright green or blue. They were fed by pipes and circular discs perforated with little holes to spray the water down like rain.

Scattered were various bottles and long handled brushes for washing with. Piles of fluffy towels were placed around the room on benches and stools. Alcoves built into the walls had other items Trevor couldn't quite make out but assumed they were ointments.

Trevor couldn't help but be impressed. His thoughts wandered to Alucard growing up with splendid rooms at his disposal and compared it to the Belmont bathing area (which was a bucket of water outside to get the initial muck off, a servant to help remove dirty armour before treading it through the house, and finally a bath in what was originally hot water, but was now lukewarm from the other hunters using it first).

His guard shoved Trevor towards another set of rooms, and he discovered that he was in some sort of privy. The chains around him had loosened enough for him to walk, and now they moved again with their own magic, unbinding him until Trevor only had a loop around his neck like a noose.

The fledgling hadn't spoken the whole time, instead staring at Trevor from under the shadow of their hood.

"What?" asked Trevor. "Not going to look away?"

The vampire didn't reply. Trevor shrugged and inspected the privy instead, commenting, "No amount of staring will prevent me from killing you eventually. And there's always an eventually."

The thing had a seat with a lid and a large box behind it like a backrest. The backrest had two buttons on the top. Trevor pressed one, heard rushing water, and opened the lid to see water rushing through the basin-like area underneath.

It wasn't hard to put two and two together. Clearly the water carried the waste away somewhere. Hm. Clever.

Not wanting to have his back turned to the vampire, Trevor turned around and sat, entering the world's worst pissing contest.

"Still not talking?" said Trevor to the vampire.

Nothing.

Trevor rolled his eyes.

He grabbed some of the thin paper that was rolled up next to the privy – it had no other clear use and his guard didn't protest – wiped himself down and pressed the button again. Before the water started to flow, the vampire guard moved, slamming the lid shut, then dragged Trevor to a basin that had more pipes and knobs, demonstrating that he was to wash his hands.

Trevor did, rubbing soap over his hands, and then nearly yelped as the water came out icy cold. He scrubbed his hands and winced at how dirty the water was. Well, there was more where that came from. No wonder Dracula wanted to drown him in a bath – to his delicate vampire sensibilities, Trevor must have smelt abhorrent.

Part of Trevor wanted to keep being smelly to keep Dracula away, but a much larger part of him wanted to be clean again. He was covered in dried sweat and blood and other fluids he didn't want to think about.

The guard yanked on the chain and Trevor stumbled after them, neck feeling the burn of the metal tightening. If they kept this up, Dracula's healing would be undone.

He was dragged over to one of the baths, exiting the small privy room, and shoved directly into the water, stockings and all. Trevor found his footing and emerged, nearly screeching in rage, and swiped at the guard's leg, knocking him down. Dragging the armoured body closer, Trevor dumped them into the water, looping the chain around their neck and pulling hard, using his foot to keep them underwater.

This wouldn't kill his guard. Trevor knew this. The guard knew this. Looking around, Trevor spied one of the long handled back scrubbers on the edge of the pool. Quickly transferring the chains to one hand, he snatched up the brush, smashed the head against the tiles, and fractured the head. He slammed it down again, making the brush head go flying and without hesitation let go of the chains.

His guard shot right up, launching himself at Trevor. With one decisive strike, Trevor launched his makeshift stake through the vampire's unprotected neck.

"Right, so remember when I said I'd kill you?" asked Trevor, speaking loudly over the bloodied gargling of the fledgling. "I don't break my promises."

He put his whole weight into the stake, and heaved, feeling it slide through. The vampire's body flailed about, scratching Trevor's cheek open with a long nail, and then went limp. It took a moment but they disintegrated, leaving the water murky and full of ashes and dirt, and his hands full of a makeshift stake.

He was panting. Bleeding. Exhausted from a lack of proper rest, and no food or water. Standing waist deep in the remains of one of Dracula's soldiers, with a chain wrapped around his throat so tightly that he was sure it was bruising his neck again.

Now was his chance to run. The textured tiles would make it harder to see the trail of water he was leaving behind, and he was certain he could dry off with some of the towels lying about.

Pulling himself out of the water, Trevor scooped up the rest of the chain, trying to unwind it from his neck, but finding that the links had fused together, interlocking to form a thick band.

His boots were soaked, dripping water and mud through the baths, and Trevor ducked into an alcove to dry off, his clothes sticking to him. He nearly had to chuckle – Sypha and Alucard would have gotten a kick out of seeing him soaking wet like a semi-drowned rat.

He towelled himself as best he could, leaving dirty marks all over the pure white linens, and shrugged. Dracula's problem now. Probably had an army of goblins to do his housework anyway.

He heard a door opening and froze.

"I see your guard wasn't too your taste," came a deep rumbling baritone.

It was Dracula. He sounded completely unsurprised.

"Then again, you are a Belmont," said Dracula.

His voice echoed off the walls, making it hard for Trevor to pin him down. The sound of falling water also muffled any movement Dracula was making. Trevor shied back from peering out of the alcove, and focused on slowing his breath.

"You can hardly be expected to go against your nature."

Where the fuck was he?

Should Trevor make a break? Dracula was faster and stronger, the only way out was to be hidden long enough that Dracula went elsewhere to look for him. Hiding wasn't really an option against a vampire, especially not one like Dracula. They were too in tune with their sensitive abilities to not find Trevor.

"Your nature is known. Drunk, mad, murdering..."

A hand grabbed Trevor by the shoulder and pushed him against the alcove wall. By instinct, Trevor jabbed forward with the stake, but it was slapped away, sent clattering well out of reach. Dracula had found him, the chain around Trevor's neck unwinding, one cold, perfectly kept hand slipping inside Trevor's high collar to thumb at his throat.

"...Belmont."

Dracula's fangs seemed longer and larger than before, a look of hunger so extreme that Trevor wondered when Dracula had last fed. Was Dracula feeding? Why would he not feed?

Trevor's thoughts were swept away as Dracula tore open Trevor's still wet shirt. Starting to struggle, Trevor found himself pinned in, and gasped as Dracula shoved a thigh between his legs, using it to push Trevor up the wall so his feet couldn't touch the ground.

It gave him a flash to his first encounter with Alucard, and Trevor shivered, trying to unbalance himself so he could roll to the ground. This wasn't right.

Then he felt that piercing pain in his neck, followed by sheer euphoria as Dracula bit him. He let out a soft whimper, a moan even, and his eyes fluttered closed. God, no wonder people gave in to vampires.

This wasn't like the first time Dracula had bitten him. This was more tender, taking everything from one bite, deeply, than trying to induce pain and a bloodied neck. Dracula was doing something different, cradling him close with a tenderness that he hadn't before.

Was Dracula thinking of Lisa?

It was hard to think, the pleasant joy overwhelming his need to get away, get out. Trevor relaxed, hands hanging uselessly by his side.

Dracula retreated, letting Trevor's weight fall into his arms as he carried him over to a clean bath. Trevor barely noticed, dizzy and weak, when he was laid on the tiles and his pants and stockings stripped off. His breeches soon followed, and he was lowered into a lukewarm pool, head resting on a pillow.

Dracula bit his wrist and knelt next to the bath.

"Drink," he commanded, but this time it was as soft as a lover's caress.

Trevor, having never been loved softly in his life, drank.


	5. Chapter 5

They always broke. Always gave in. Compulsion was equal parts magic and psychological warfare, and Dracula had figured out the Belmont's weakness: tenderness.

Dracula only allowed Belmont a mouthful of his blood, if that. It was enough to heal any lingering fresh bruises, the last of the damage to Belmont's throat, and to coax his body into producing more blood. The Belmont seemed almost to doze off in Dracula's hands, unable to stay entirely awake under the thick layers of compulsion, creamy and sweet, scented by rosewater and soap. Those sharp blue eyes were still open, drowsy but watching. A lesser demon would have found it unnerving.

Dracula was no demon. He was the king of the night, the lord of monsters.

"You can feel it, can't you?" asked Dracula, although he expected no answer and received none. "My power running through you. Becoming part of you."

He traced Belmont's jawline right down to his chin, long elegant fingers trailing over the unexplored valleys and mountains of Belmont's throat, and finally letting it rest on Belmont's chest. His heart was beating fast. Adrenaline. Fear. Arousal. Any combination of these, and it would paint a familiar response to being turned.

And yet he would not be turned. Not yet. This torture would be slow and sweet, stripping away the Belmont's pride, honour, and humanity like dry rot, until one day all Dracula would need to do was tap that precious human heart and watch him crumble away.

So Belmont could fight it as much as he liked.

Dracula gazed at the Belmont, at how helpless he was.

"You're watching for weaknesses. I can tell, but I would be disappointed if you weren't," said Dracula.

He took up the soap and wash cloth, lathering the bar over Belmont's chest. Human skin was so full of life - the Belmont had an unusual olive tone, something that seemed pale but took the sun well without burning. It had a tone of pink, a flush from the warmth of the baths and Belmont's own displeasure.

There was nothing the Belmont could do. It was already taking all of his effort not to fall further under the spell of compulsion. Being bathed by his family's archenemy was a good start to the destruction of the man called Trevor Belmont.

Dracula found that they would surely have to change the bathwater, as the amount of filth coming off the Belmont was truly amazing. It stained the water a murky red, swirling in eddies and patterns that felt like they could reveal the pathways of Belmont's soul, if one took care enough to study them.

The tiredness in Belmont's eyes were overtaking his ability to stay on guard, and his lashes fluttered once, twice, before finally closing for good.

Dracula had the brief impulsive thought to drown the Belmont. It didn't even form the picture of the process, just his hands around Trevor's throat, the air draining out in precious bubbles as he thrashed, trying to break Dracula's grip.

But he didn't.

Instead he pulled the man out, dunking him in a fresh bath, grimacing when the rest of the dirt came off. Something for the lesser demons to clean up. Dracula only had to prod at the Belmont to dry off, and soon the man was standing with a towel wrapped around him for modesty.

Dracula tested the compulsion. Belmont's mind was elsewhere. His body would quiver and twitch intermittently, as if he were dreaming and fighting a monster in his sleep. He _was_ fighting in his sleep, Dracula mused. Just not in the typical way of sleeping or fighting.

Knowing that the Belmont's soul was elsewhere, locked up and unable to protect his physical body, Dracula led him to the wardrobe.

***

Trevor felt himself going under and couldn't stop it. There were more important things to do with what power he had.

The main thing was fighting off the vampirism that was attempting to rewrite his mind. Belmonts had always had a natural defence against being turned - werewolf, vampire, and any other sort of beast - but Trevor had only just begun to learn how to use it when his family was cruelly torn from him. It took training and study, something he had pieced together in the Belmont archives, and he was not confident in his ability to force off the changes Dracula wrought.

Despite what he had said to Alucard and Sypha, he had been able to read a good number of the books in the library but he always had this itching feeling that they were not showing him the actual text. His mother had mentioned there were more things hiding in plain sight than his eyes would let him see, after he had discovered her studying what looked like a blank book for hours on end.

Trevor supposed it had something to do with not being able to use magic.

Well, their magic hadn't been able to save them, so Trevor supposed his sheer pigheaded stubbornness would have to do instead.

Which seemed to be working.

Or at least, it kept the blood-drenched version of himself with clawed fingers and a smile full of teeth on the other side of the mental river Trevor had built in his mind. Visualisation was something that even he could do without magic, and Trevor was leaning on it now.

Through his actual eyes, he could see Dracula, carefully bathing Trevor. The vampire's face was unusually smooth, focused as he was on the task at hand. Trevor tried not to think about the fact that he was being bathed by the most notorious vampire in history, and jolted in surprise when the blood-drenched Trevor lifted his hands and made a splitting motion.

The river between them started to rise, forming a narrow pathway of dry ground.

Trevor ripped at the air, using hand motions that he'd seen Sypha use to shape her ice and fire, and took a loop of the river, smashing it around that eerie mirrored self, trapping them on an island.

He doubled his efforts, widening the river, turning it into a broad moat that kept moving, fed by the rapids he had made first. The movement was important: running water was what kept that awful intruder standing on the island and not leaping across it to sink his teeth into Trevor's neck.

He fed the river power by instinct, the water so violent that it should have swept his enemy away, or at least cleaned him of blood, but neither had happened.

The spray was misting over him, a sweeter scent than any river water had the right to be.

It was then that Trevor realised more time had passed outside than he had been conscious of.

He coughed, inhaling perfume. His mind self kept his hands raised, the river churning froth and ice like the spring melt from a mountain, but it faltered ever so slightly.

Then he snapped back to his physical body, aware of something crunching down on his ribs and waist. They weren't in the baths anymore, no, he had felt himself being dried and moved, although he hadn't paid attention.

He'd been put into something gauzy, light, like the silks that had draped from the ceiling. It was completely different to what he would normally wear.

It pinched harder, and Trevor let out a gasp of pain.

"This might slow you down," said Dracula. "If you can barely breathe, you can't fight. Your range of motion is limited, so that puts most of your little tricks out of action."

Dracula put his hand on Trevor's waist.

"Although I didn't expect you to already have such a slim figure."

Trevor twisted around, and tried to punch Dracula in the face. Dracula caught the fist, smiled, and said, "Good to see your spirit isn't broken yet. I was worrying if the compulsion was too heavy."

"I will not break," snarled Trevor.

"You will eventually," said Dracula. "Humans always break."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all of the comments!! I was out of action for a bit so it's lovely to see such support to keep going.
> 
> Edited to say: yup! Corset!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things get a bit messy and violent here. Lots of non con elements so beware!

After he had been dressed, Trevor had been dragged back to the court, and chained to a loop next to Dracula's throne. It was securely bolted into the floor, the metal thick enough to suggest that Dracula had kept werewolves on either side of him at some point.

At least he hadn't been sent up to hang from the ceiling again. Although the next few hours made Trevor reconsider the benefits of not swinging around slowly. Down on the ground, all of Dracula's surviving generals had easy access to him.

They didn't drink from him - Dracula had forbidden it - but they were allowed to touch.

"An interesting choice of garments, my lord," said the Japanese general.

She touched the corset and frowned, bringing her fingers up to sniff at them delicately. A slight wrinkle marred her immaculate face before she spoke again, "There's silver in it."

Sypha had almost ended her life once, she didn't look as if she particularly cherished the idea.

"You are quite safe," said Dracula. "The only exposed silver is on the Belmont directly. And since he's human, he should feel safer with a little armour around his ribcage."

"I wouldn't call it armour. More like ornamentation. Something pretty to make him more palatable," she said.

Her fingers twisted into Trevor's freshly washed hair, evaluating its length. It was still damp from the bath, curling a little, with a few particularly wavy pieces framing his cheeks. He snarled at her, pulling away, only to have his chain magically shorten and force his head down.

"General Chō is to be respected and you will give it to her," said Dracula.

The tips of his fingers were glowing, and the nails looked like little spikes of hot metal. Trevor grunted as the chain shortened again, his forehead inches away from making contact with the floor. This close he could see scratch marks in the stone. It took a moment to realise they were darker than the rest of the stone, stained with the blood from whichever poor soul had been here last. They weren't deep, but they crisscrossed over and over, forming a horrifying patina. Blunt nails. Quick blood.

He felt the coolness of a vampire's hand on his neck. Trevor kept his breathing even, trying not to let fear get the better of him. Bent over as he was, he couldn't do anything to defend his neck. The vampire brushed Trevor's hair to one side, and the warm, bemused chuckle confirmed that it was Chō, not Dracula, toying with him.

"I see now why we are forbidden from drinking from him."

Chō's fingers carded through Trevor's hair. He gagged, then forced himself to think of Sypha, wincing as his face made contact with the floor. It was just Sypha, and he was lying down because he'd drunk too much, and Alucard–

It was too rough to be either of them. Chō's fingers yanked on his hair.

"It's turning wavy," she said. "How pretty. I can barely recognise him from the scruffy whelp hanging from the ceiling."

Trevor muttered a particularly dark insult, wanting her to stop touching him. Her hands ran over his face.

"Perhaps you should shave him, my lord?"

"Perhaps I should cut your throat," said Trevor, loudly, and then choked against the collar around his throat. At this rate he'd have no voice left.

Chō laughed, and it was like a gentle tinkling of rain on leaves. How could something so pretty belong to a vampire this insidious?

"You always did like a challenge," she said, bowing respectfully to Dracula and leaving the raised platform to join her soldiers.

Trevor felt his chain loosen, just enough that his nose wasn't squashed into the ground, and Dracula put one boot on Trevor's head to turn it towards him. Inside Trevor's mind, the blood-soaked mirror of himself keened in delight at the attention, and before Trevor could stop himself, he exhaled, the quietest of moans on his lips as he let his mirror take control momentarily.

In a room of vampires, this hadn't gone unnoticed.

His bodice – Trevor didn't know what else to call it – warmed for a moment, strips of boning heating up through the thin shirt it had been bound over, and then he snapped back, wresting control from the bloody parasite that was trying to change him.

Dracula was watching him the whole time. No, more than watching. Studying with a scientific edge, his hate put aside for curiosity untethered by any code of ethics or morals. He lifted his boot, satisfied by Trevor's humiliation.

"You are always a pleasure to watch, Belmont," said Dracula. "Even if you are uncouth and ill mannered, I suppose that's just the result of being by yourself since you were twelve."

He turned back to his court, and said, "Play with him as you like but leave no marks."

With a flourish of his cape, Dracula vanished, the fabric twisting in on itself as it travelled elsewhere. The court murmured in admiration at the trick – Trevor listened carefully but could make out nothing specific from his exposed position next to the throne.

Footsteps approached from behind Trevor, so he couldn't see who it was, but the fingers on his back made him still. They were warm through the thin material of his shirt. A human.

"It is a shame that I cannot introduce you to any of my whips, Belmont. We could have had a nice discussion about how to best flay the skin from a body," said the person behind him.

It was a deep, honeyed voice, unlike any voice Trevor had heard before. It was rich, sitting somewhere low in the speaker's chest, reverberating before pouring out in crisp, refined notes.

Trevor did not rise to the bait. He knew what this man was up to, or at least he thought he knew. He knew enough not to trust him. A human serving in a vampire court was more unpredictable and dangerous than a vampire serving other vampires. Trevor didn't know where this man's allegiances lay, what he had been promised in exchange for his service.

He was here willingly, and from what Trevor had seen of the man there was the presumption that he was in a position of power. There were only two people that Trevor knew of that fitted the bill, and he had only seen one of them in Dracula's court since the fight.

"You must be Isaac," said Trevor.

He wasn't stupid. Dracula had employed two forgemasters to make an army. He already knew what Isaac looked like from when he had been hanging from the ceiling. The other one hadn't made an appearances and Trevor quietly hoped that it was because they were dead.

Trevor was rolled over, the chain and collar tightening briefly before loosening off as Isaac tugged on it, using his will to make it longer. Huh, good information to have. It seemed the chain could be manipulated by anyone but the wearer.

"You assume correctly, Belmont," said Isaac, kneeling over Trevor.

With his hands bound behind his back, Trevor could do nothing as Isaac unlaced Trevor's shirt all the way to the top of the bodice, the edge of which sat just under his chest.

Isaac was, like everyone else in Dracula's court, undeniably handsome. Once that thought was forcibly shoved aside, Trevor started looking for weaknesses.

Scars on his head. Old, healed up. Not particularly close to any sensitive areas. Better off just making new scars.

He was young - maybe only a few years older than Trevor. His uniform suggested broad shoulders, although it had those strange spikes coming off it. Trevor was almost certain the shoulders weren't an illusion.

Not even a slip of skin was bare below Isaac's neck with the exception of his hands. Like his shoulders, Isaac's hands were broad, but his fingers were long enough that the effect was offset, only to reveal their true size whenever he brought his hand down flat on Trevor's body.

Trevor inhaled sharply as Isaac touched the bruising on Trevor's neck from Dracula's bite. He lost his sight for a moment as stars burst and danced in front of his eyes. He figured he blacked out momentarily because he hadn't felt Isaac move his hand off the bruise.

Isaac clicked his tongue under his breath, and stood, now addressing the vampire court.

"Someone should bring this man bread and water. It would be unfortunate for him to die so soon," said Isaac. "I can sense that our lord has successfully planted his gift in this ungrateful human, but he is not feeding on blood just yet. Our lord intends to see this to the end. Feed him."

Isaac crouched, taking Trevor's face in his hands and shoving his fingers into Trevor's mouth. A tooth snagged on the rough skin of Isaac's fingers, and he pulled away before it bled into Trevor's mouth. Considering how rough they felt with calluses they shouldn't have been cut open.

"You are growing in finely."

Trevor ran his tongue over his teeth, trying to rid himself of the taste of Isaac's fingers, and froze in horror as he realised they were sharper. Not by much, and they were certainly not fangs, but sharper.

Isaac, catching the expression, smiled and said, "Now you are beginning to understand."

Chō materialised next to them in her eagerness to examine Isaac's discovery. As if a spell had been broken, the other generals came forth to prod and poke at Trevor. Isaac took a step back, his handiwork having accomplished making Trevor into a toy to play with rather than an enemy to be feared.

He snarled as a hand dipped inside his shirt, but he didn't know who was where, the vampires crowding around like ants on a crumb.

Trevor closed his eyes, trying to put himself anywhere but in the hall, and found himself face to face with his bloodied self in the trap he had created.

They hadn't appeared to have moved, but Trevor had the eerie feeling they were closer regardless. He couldn't see their eyes, even though they were clearly looking at him. The blood didn't drip or congeal, but it would flake off in the water whenever a spray was particularly violent.

Trevor shuddered, and came back to himself in the arms of a soldier, face hidden by their helmet. How he had gotten there was a mystery - and how much time had passed too - but the soldier was shivering.

Vampires didn't feel the cold.

Fear then?

Trevor realised he had his hands poised over the soldier's exposed throat, the armour protecting it having been torn off. His fingers were blunt and human but a strength swelled in him that was not.

He struck, fingers digging into flesh.

Inside, his bloodstained self screamed in delight and Trevor leaned in, opening his mouth to use his teeth to tear the skin away.

The vampire court shrieked and screamed, losing themselves in the joy of watching a Belmont make such a violent kill.

But before he could taste the flesh, he was dragged off the fledgling, who was left panting, rubbing at the nearly broken skin. Trevor twisted around, growling at the one who would deny him his kill, and willingly sank his teeth into Dracula's offered wrist.


	7. Chapter 7

It was a dark night, quiet, without the sound of even a field mouse rustling in the undergrowth. Clouds scudded across the sky like boats in a stiff breeze, but it didn't seem to touch the earth where Sypha and Alucard were camping. It felt lonely without Trevor, even though they had each other. It wasn't the same.

Alucard seemed to have sealed himself up in a wall of frost, his heart so tightly bound by ice crystals that Sypha feared she'd never see his warmth again. His eyes were a hard yellow, like sap that had poured and solidified from an injured tree. If they didn't retrieve Trevor, then Sypha didn't know how to drag Alucard out from that tower of solitude.

An easy word here, a crude joke there, and that's all Trevor needed to make Alucard live with them in the present. Sypha was not Trevor. Her way of making him _here_ and not _there_ was to needle straight through to the holes in his aloofness, to try to bring him into the light after languishing in despair. While Trevor would just call Alucard a bastard to his face with no prompting, Sypha would ask questions until she found an opening, and strike at the heart of the problem.

It took both of them to stop Alucard from frosting over entirely. Just like it took Alucard to keep things in balance with Trevor and Sypha.

Sypha sighed, prodding their campfire with a stick. The tip turned red as it smouldered and caught alight. Breathing out, she smothered the flame with a tip of frozen water. It started to drip when she shoved it back into the fire but at least her stick was still intact. The sizzling noise was a comfort in the stillness.

A skinned rabbit was roasting over the fire. She didn't feel hungry but she knew she was. It was turning black, the edges becoming crispy charcoal.

"Dinner is burning," said Alucard, as if he'd just noticed.

It wasn't an accusation, merely a statement of surprise. Alucard lifted the rabbit off and set it aside, giving the skewer to Sypha. It had to cool down before she could eat, but she nibbled at it anyway, scorching her tongue.

She put it down.

"Dracula has moved the castle twice since we set off to find it. Both times we were close," said Sypha. "Do you think he is toying with us?"

The first time, they had been a few days out from the castle's location. The second, they had actually seen the spires in the distance. It had disappeared with a great crack of lightning in the night, the displacement destroying the woods it had stood in. Sypha was glad they hadn't been caught in the displacement when they were escaping, otherwise they'd be nothing but a smear on the ground.

"It takes a great amount of strength to move the castle. I think he is aware that we are coming for him, but the distance is reducing each time. If he were truly adamant about us not finding him, he'd move it somewhere we couldn't follow," said Alucard. "He wants us to rescue Trevor so he can crush us."

Either that or Dracula was as tired as they were. Which made no sense whatsoever. Even without magic Trevor was a Belmont, and that was essentially an on-demand power tap. Alucard had smelt it the first time he had met Trevor. He knew Dracula would too.

Belmont blood was different. The reasons were unknown, but its appeal was probably what had led them to take up monster fighting in the first place just to get some damn peace and quiet.

Dracula would be a fool not to take advantage of it.

"You think it is a trap," said Sypha.

"I wouldn't assume it isn't a trap in some way," replied Alucard.

Sypha picked up the rabbit again, and found that it had cooled appropriately. It didn't make it any more appealing, but she tore off some meat with her teeth, and handed it over to Alucard so he could also eat.

His fangs sank in first, an instinct he clearly couldn't suppress without focusing on it. Sypha had seen him eat without the teeth out, but that had been in a human village, and his expression of concentration had made Sypha laugh. Trevor had held back, probably too interested in trying to sneak another flagon of ale without Sypha noticing than what Alucard was up to.

Now it felt like it emphasised Alucard's vampiric half more than ever, reminding Sypha of the reason they had teamed up in the first place.

Reminding her of what they had abandoned Trevor to.

Alucard only needed a small amount of food. She hadn't seen him drink any blood, but she suspected he was bleeding their meals first before bringing them back to camp. So when he handed the rabbit back after only a mouthful, she didn't protest.

"So either way, we'll catch up with the castle eventually," said Sypha.

"Eventually. Inevitably."

Neither of them dared to suppose Trevor would be still alive. Speaking such words felt like it would be Trevor's immediate demise.

Sypha tried to steel her heart against the wanderings and hypotheses her mind wanted to explore, and found that she had neither the resolve or desire to imagine anything other than a happy ending for them all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all of your kind words. I've been trying to get this chapter out for a while, but as you can see it's a little shorter than usual. I came down with influenza A right before the holidays, fell into a bout of severe depression again, was fighting chronic fatigue, and had to deal with my emotional vampire of a grandmother. I also burnt my hand on an oven.
> 
> I think I'm okay now, but I'm also back at work and I've caught another illness. I hope you can forgive the amount of time between updates and the relatively short length of this chapter!


	8. Chapter 8

Gossip traveled faster than horses.

Vampires in the north. More demonic creatures in the south. Not a night or day without _something_ to fight.

They were closed in on both sides, a sheer drop into a valley on their right, and a dense, steep forest that was too thick to take their cart through. Sypha and Alucard were dangerously exposed, and with the sun high in the sky Alucard was weakened. Of course, he still had his strength and abilities, but they drained away much faster in the light. He was confined to one shape, and despite having been asleep for a year, was more and more lethargic as their journey dragged on.

Sypha suspected that maybe he wasn't draining their dinners of blood as she had first surmised. That he was deliberately letting her eat more of their supplies.

"When are you going to stop lying about your food?" she asked when he declined to have any of the salted pork she had boiled for their breakfast and was now eating for lunch.

The pork had been found untouched in a destroyed inn some days before. They'd also found perfectly preserved vegetables and smoked meats. The village itself was nearly razed to the ground, and the people that had lived there had long since died or moved on. The remains of a funeral pyre was decomposing, wood and charcoal long since burnt out.

"I'm not lying," said Alucard. "I don't need as much as you."

Sypha had kept count of the days and rations since the battle with Dracula in a journal. It was a handsome thing that she had liberated from the Belmont archives, along with enough ink and pens to fill her book three times over. Speakers weren't supposed to write their histories down, but Sypha's heart rebelled against it after seeing the Belmont archives.

If they wrote their stories, then perhaps it would help others in the future. Perhaps it would help _them_ in the future. Events were so easily distorted and ruined by time.

She had been careful not to destroy any hidden texts – books that appeared blank at first but whispered secrets to those who knew how to listen. This one had a few pages filled out at the front, a child's attempts at mimicking a beastiary, or perhaps a diary to emulate their older siblings, to feel included. Not secret or useful, but sacred in its own way. Keeping a record in an abandoned journal felt appropriate.

_Today I had a boiled egg and porridge for breakfast and fresh milk from the cow. Mother said I should learn how to milk from the stablehands. It is a skill that might come in handy, and I think she is right. I cannot think of when we would have a cow on a hunt, but she said that sometimes a Belmont must exchange other skills for a meal and boarding._

_Father is back tomorrow and soon it will be Mother's turn to lead a hunt. I am too young to go, but Jenefer did her first hunt last month after her 13th birthday. She said she saw a unicorn..._

There wasn't enough to tell if it was Trevor's journal. It might have been, but the writing seemed off. Too innocent. Of course, Trevor _had_ been innocent but it was too hard to imagine him as a boy. He was a man that had the aura of having sprung, fully formed from a forest as a Fae might, and then immediately lured into being trapped in the human world with a flagon of alcohol.

He was not ethereal in the same way that Alucard was, but there was a strange touch of otherworldliness that Sypha couldn't pin down to any one feature. The more fired up he became – and the less drunk – the more Sypha could see it.

Running her fingers over the cover of the book, Sypha wondered what the significance of the dragons were to the Belmont crest. Fierce nobility? Honour? Protectors of the weak? Dragons were rarely painted in a kind light, but these two stretched upwards in a glorious spread. The arch above them twisted with vines and leaves, protecting the ornate cross in the centre, a testament to the faithful loyalty the Belmonts had protected the Church with, and then been betrayed by.

Or was it showing their faith to an order higher than a human-made house of religion? Sypha knew Trevor's faith had been ground into dust, and smeared across his face to show how foolish it was to give it so freely. She wondered if he had been able to scoop up what little he had of it left, and decided that he hadn't, instead forming a new faith in his companions.

They had been so confident they'd win. Why had they thought they would be able to decimate Dracula so easily? They'd been terrible fools.

Alucard nudged Sypha from where she was at the driver's seat, still chewing on cold pork.

"Let me drive."

"You know full well that is a stupid thing for you to do," snapped Sypha.

Alucard blinked, clearly not expecting to be scolded.

"But–"

"If you eat something, then you can drive. Otherwise you'll swoon in this sunlight," she said. "We agreed that you would drive in the early morning and evening."

"You are fatigued," said Alucard.

It was true, she was. But Sypha was a Speaker and was used to traveling slowly. However, even Speakers knew how to entertain themselves whilst on the road.

Alucard looked strained, like he didn't know how to occupy those stretched out hours between markers. Speakers sang or talked, or prepared small crafts and wares to trade at their next stop. Singing was out of the question due to their covert nature. Sypha was driving and she didn't have the right materials to make anything anyway.

Of course, Alucard could talk to Sypha, and they had talked thoroughly about their plan, but Speaker travel also had silence, something that Alucard seemed to be struggling with despite having traveled by himself before. Maybe it was because he was not traveling carefree, the weight of his guilt dragging at his body and mind.

Maybe he was just impatient.

Either way, Sypha was sick of it.

"And you think the horses will like you any better?"

It was the wrong thing to say. Sypha felt Alucard flinch more than saw, and the cart shifted as he slid back into the covered tray.

She reminded herself that she too was impatient, and guilty.

"That was harsh. I'm sorry," she said.

Alucard didn't reply.

For a moment, she thought she had so deeply offended him that he had left. Then one long leg slid over the back of her seat, and the second one followed as Alucard seated himself beside her, a considerable chunk of boiled pork held in his mouth as he used his hands to ease himself down. He looked pale, sickly even in the sunlight, and he squinted ahead as if the sun was the one being rude and not Sypha.

He took the pork from his mouth, slid one hand around her waist, and put his head against her shoulder, whispering, "I apologise for my brutishness."

Then he pulled away and started eating the pork, looking better by the second for it. There was a slight intensity to how he fed, like he had been hungry for quite some time.

Sypha let him drive once he'd finished.

***

The path continued for hours, the uneasy and narrow position forcing them to go slower than they would have liked. They made the next village well after the sun had set, and the only reason they made safely it was due to Alucard's eyes.

It was small and unremarkable, without even a signpost to mark the area. Maybe it had been named at some point, but the people living there didn't seem too concerned about replacing the signs.

Sypha and Alucard spent several hours in the tavern, eating a proper meal and listening in the corner. It wasn't hard to gather information when all anyone could talk about was the night horde and Dracula's castle.

They were still heading in the right direction, according to one particularly tipsy man by the fireplace. He was one wine away from completely drunk, and was asleep on the floor by nine. He snored loudly and had bandages all the way up his exposed forearms, blood spotting through the cloth.

"They are not drinking for the pleasure of it," said Sypha.

"No," said Alucard, sipping at his plum spirits. "They're not. The night horde must have passed recently."

They retreated at midnight, going back to their cart with extra supplies bought from the tavern. While Sypha didn't like alcohol, the brewster warned them that the local water had been contaminated for quite some time now, and the process of making ale had seemed to solve that problem.

"This is the brew I sell for children and anyone not wanting to get drunk before the work day," she said. "Which is not a lot, these days."

She also sold them the plum spirits for which Alucard had a fondness for, hard tack biscuits, some flour, and yeast in exchange for one of the large barrels of salted pork.

"I wish I could help you more, but we just don't have anything to sell," sighed the brewster. "Most of the animals are dead, so we appreciate the meat. The chickens are laying plenty so we can't kill them. Someone found the rooster up a tree a mile from here, and brought him back. Not even a scratch."

She stared long and hard at Alucard. It was unnerving, like she was examining every detail, from his eyes that glowed with the warm light of the tavern, to the unmarked face. Sypha clenched her hands in her robes, calculating the movements of her next spell so they didn't cause any structural damage. 

The brewster reached under the bar and pulled out a length of ribbon.

"For your hair. It would be a shame if some foul thing were to grab it."

When Alucard tried to pay her for it, she shook her head.

"Can't eat it. Can't use it for anything other than hair, and I have plenty."

He thanked her and put his hair back immediately as a show of good will.

As they made their way back to the cart, he felt Sypha's fingers brush over his now exposed neck. He didn't quite shiver or jolt, but the skin there was sensitive, and he turned to tilt his head at Sypha. Sypha's large, baby blue eyes stared back, her mouth open as if to ask a question.

Then she moved in, kissing him gently on the cheek, the jaw, the neck, and finally the lips.

He sighed in pleasure and some of his icy loneliness melted under Sypha's hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all of your kind words and comments, they really helped. I will try to get to them all individually.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this chapter


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've got vomiting and a brief suicidal thought in this chapter as well as more forced bathing and deliberate injuries. I would apologise for the intensity but I'm always this brutal in fics like this.
> 
> Also we got to 666 kudos: the devil has arrived

When Trevor had been little he had always been the sort of child to put things in his mouth and chew it to see what it tasted like. He had eaten several pebbles once according to his harried mother, a woman who had already raised three girls and a boy with Trevor as a surprise fifth child. Isolde had scolded him, but only gently, sending him to be with his siblings so he didn't eat any more. He had been three, so he didn't remember, only trusted that his mother was telling the truth.

It didn't help that his siblings would dare Trevor to eat things. The grosser, the better. They were older and had an advantage: Trevor's blind faith in his older siblings to not lead him astray.

So Trevor had experience of putting a lot of things in his mouth that he really shouldn't be eating. Or wouldn't eat unless goaded.

Dracula's blood was one of those things. Unlike the pebbles, the snails, or the dirt or any weird plant that his siblings presented him with, this actually tasted good. Driven out of his mind by his situation, Trevor was moving on automatic, his instincts being rewritten and reworked the longer he was in this state between human and vampire.

The blood was intoxicating, metallic and familiar, and yet something else entirely. Trevor drank greedily, barely aware that he was sitting on Dracula's lap, flush with the man's chest. He remembered attacking another vampire, and being pulled off like a disobedient cat, and then given Dracula's wrist as compensation.

But he didn't remember how he ended up on Dracula's lap and he personally didn't care. The blood was far more appealing.

Eventually, he broke off as his hunger was sated, a weakness grasping his body and making him like a rag doll in Dracula's lap. The only reason Trevor didn't fall off was Dracula's firm hand on Trevor's chest. The other hand slid down Trevor's body, starting with his hair, stroking downwards.

An unbearable sensitivity arose in Trevor, and each touch made him gasp and shiver and squirm, his face heating with a mix of embarrassment and desire. When Dracula pressed his palm to Trevor's crotch, Trevor snapped back to the present and found himself undeniably hard in the soft trousers Dracula had dressed him in.

"Stop," he slurred, lethargic and punch drunk on blood.

Dracula moved his hand away and released Trevor, letting him slide to the ground by himself. He was a crumpled heap, a tangle of limbs, a _failure_.

Trevor's hands pushed at the bindings on his waist, their warmth starting to move towards uncomfortable. His mental prison for his blood soaked self was crumbling, and his stomach - having been fed nothing but scraps - churned as the blood hit it. It was too rich and too much.

Trevor avoided vomiting it up on Dracula's boots, but he did soak the carpet. Small victories.

"Fetch bread and water, and move him out of his mess," ordered Dracula. "The Belmont just learnt a powerful lesson about feeding on things that are not for him."

Lightheaded and shaking, Trevor didn't remember the last time he'd eaten actual food. Was it yesterday or the day before? He knew he'd drunk water at some point, but being in the heart of the castle meant that the passage of time was nearly impossible to judge as there were no windows.

A plate was thrust at him by a fledgling. Trevor grabbed it before it fell. The vampire soldier was either being disrespectful or scared, or both. Another soldier placed a jug of water down, and this one wasn't scared, hissing, "You're just his plaything. He'll discard you soon enough."

Trevor bared his teeth, which would have been more intimidating if he hadn't just thrown up in front of the whole vampire court. Then he looked down at his plate. Fresh bread, cheese, and what looked like a watery porridge. Nothing too harsh for his stomach.

Uncaring of the fact that he was being watched by the court like a curiosity, Trevor tucked in with the ferocity of a man who knew he wouldn't be fed again soon. His stomach complained but he didn't throw up again. He found that the bindings around his waist meant that it was difficult to eat any more than was on the plate, even if there had been more.

The sour taste of vomit was washed away by the food and water temporarily, although he could still taste it faintly. Dracula had continued to conduct his own business, talking to his generals.

Their attacks were well under way, more coordinated than before as if something had snapped on in Dracula's mind. Trevor listened, even though he knew he wouldn't hear anything vitally important: Dracula wouldn't let any of those details slip in front of a Belmont. He was grieving, not stupid.

Isaac appeared as if from nowhere, whispered something to Dracula, and left through a hidden door that Trevor hadn't noticed. To be fair that was the point of hidden doors but he had higher expectations of himself when it came to the twisting mechanisms of those who walked the night.

"General Chō," said Dracula. "You said you wanted to shave the Belmont."

Chō materialised from mist, something that definitely wasn't part of the castle's mechanical tricks.

"Yes, my lord," she said, each syllable perfectly clipped in deference.

"Do as you please," said Dracula, and the court tittered in surprise at the favour he was bestowing on Chō.

***

Trevor had hardly noticed the burning sensation against his skin until Chō had her servants undress him. He was thankful for the thin material of the shirt to shield him from the exposed boning, but also keenly aware that silver shouldn't be burning him.

They descended upon him in a swarm, Chō directing her servants as she pleased with a forest of scrubbing brushes. Trevor growled and cursed. There was nowhere for him to go except into the hands of willing servants.

"My lord Dracula was correct," commented Chō from where she lounged on a pile of silks and cushions. "Belmonts are well formed."

A bucket of water was poured over Trevor's head before he could retort. He spluttered.

They had him washed and pinned down as Chō wielded a shaving knife so sharp that Trevor could swear he could hear it sing as she removed the stubble from his face. He didn't squirm, and as much as he contemplated trying to end it all right here and now, he still had hopes to escape somehow. Or be rescued.

His bloodied self was sitting on his chest, purring in delight with their hands cradling his face. The protections Trevor had made were gone and he knew it was only a matter of time before he crumbled against Dracula's will. Now that they were so close, Trevor could see they were nothing but blood, no eyes or bones, a shaped thing of terror. He'd tried to push them off but his hands had passed through their body harmlessly.

Meanwhile, Chō kept her movements even and rhythmic. She finished the shaving, handing the knife to a servant and more closely examined Trevor's face.

"You've broken your nose," said Chō.

"Several times," said Trevor.

"It didn't set properly," she said, pinching the tip lightly.

Trevor was suddenly very thankfully that Dracula had issued an order against harming him.

Or so he thought.

There was a sickening crack as she broke his nose, holding it in place as his healing abilities kicked in to set it.

"You can't fucking do that!" howled Trevor.

He could feel blood in his nose.

"I can do anything I please except feed you or feed from you," said Chō, and she cracked his nose again. "I am making you more presentable to our lord Dracula."

Chō broke his nose three more times until she was satisfied it was straight. She flicked a finger and a wet cloth was in her hand to wipe up the blood. She smelt it, sighing, "Heavenly," and the cloth was gone again.

"You will be dressed, taken back to the court, and you will behave. No more of this messy eating," said Chō as easily as one would scold a child. "You will be beautiful. You will be entertaining. And then when you are his fledgling, you will be useful."

Trevor thought her expectations were altogether too high, and deliberately ate his next meal as messily as he could.

Dracula simply nodded at Chō, and she and her servants dragged Trevor away to be cleaned again. It became a fight of compulsion and obsession: the moment Trevor even had a smudge on his hands from sitting on the floor, he'd be dragged off to be cleaned. Unlike Chō, who seemed inexhaustible, Trevor started to avoid any dirt so he wouldn't be scrubbed down _yet again_. It didn't matter if his last bath had been ten minutes ago: if there was dirt, he would be cleaned.

The other vampires took to deliberately spilling things on him, just to see his look of sheer fury as he was dragged off again.

This assault was so unlike anything he had experienced before, grating on his mind and body. His skin was sensitive and sore, and his mind was paranoid. He felt itchy and restless, the on and off burning of his constricting outfit making it hard to concentrate. He could feel his teeth, canines long and sharp, deadly, extended from hunger and desire, and he couldn't quite satisfy anything with food.

_Please...Sypha, Alucard, please find me soon_


	10. Chapter 10

At some point during another war meeting, kneeling by Dracula's side, Trevor had fallen asleep. He awoke to the stripes of silver burning through his shirt from his constricting bodice. The chains that usually bound him to the floor were now wrapped around a leg of the bed he was in. He must have been moved while he was unconscious, and wondered how he didn't wake.

His feet hurt as well, and as he sat up, swinging his legs over the edge, he discovered that he was wearing white silk ankle boots over white hose. The moment he put his feet down, Trevor let out a startled shriek of pain as the soles of his feet made contact with what he could only assume were discs of silver hammered into the lining.

They were tight and unyielding when he tried to pull them off, sealed onto his feet with the same magic that kept him from removing his bodice. He clawed at them, but they seemed nigh indestructible and he cursed the little golden flowers stitched into the surface. They were for decoration only - nobody would dare put such pure silk near any sort of dirt.

Trevor collapsed back onto the bed, sweating. The only relief the baths Chō made him take was the opportunity to have the bodice off. It was short-lived - his silver-inflicted injuries were quickly turning into angry red welts with broken, oozing skin that dried into his shirts and had to be torn off each time he was bathed. His newfound ability to heal was struggling due to his weakness from fatigue and hunger.

Trevor had stopped trying to find an opportune moment to escape. Ever since the first bathing incident, he had been kept under close watch. Now with the shoes, it was nearly impossible for him to walk let alone run away.

There was a goblet of wine and a plate of fresh fruit by the bed, which Trevor quickly ate. Someone was probably keeping an eye on him and no doubt the castle knew he was awake. He didn't know where Dracula was obtaining the food from, although he would have to keep human food for his Forgemasters.

By now Trevor knew Hector was a traitor, which didn't make sense as the man had seemed so loyal to Dracula. Isaac would show up every now and then, playing his role of commander as easily as his master. The older vampires weren't afraid of him but they did seem to avoid him. The fledglings were terrified, standing their ground for as long as they could, doing their best not to crumble in front of a human – someone who was supposed to be weaker than them – and breathing a sigh of relief when he left.

It didn't take much to figure out Hector was weaker willed than Isaac. It took a core of steel to serve Dracula and be respected by him. Isaac wasn't held in such close regard by Dracula for no reason.

The bedroom door opened, and Trevor quickly swigged back the wine. As large as the goblet was, it wasn't nearly enough to get him drunk. He sculled it in one go, unable to appreciate the flavour from his paranoia. It didn't even take the edge off.

He expected Chō and her entourage of scrubbers. Opening doors wasn't her style, however he knew she relished dragging him to the baths right after he'd woken up.

It wasn't Chō. Trevor didn't recognise this person at all, although it could have been one of the servants or soldiers without their hood or helmet. He couldn't tell whether they were male or female, and their androgyny was further masked by robes that floated about them like they were moving through water. They were carrying something in their hands, a dish covered by a cloth, and Trevor noted the thick gloves they wore.

They put the dish down next to Trevor, pulling away the cloth with a flair of dramatics.

The Morningstar.

The vampire – Trevor glimpsed a flash of fangs from their porcelain white lips – picked it up, the gloves protecting them from the holiness of the weapon.

"That's not a toy," said Trevor. It earned him a sharp look, and they grabbed his wrists before he could react, using the magical chain from his collar to bind his hands behind his back.

Picking up the Morningstar, they draped it over his neck, attaching the end to hang like a pendant at Trevor's throat, and wrapped it around him so that he wasn't bound by it, but it covered his torso regardless. The vampire didn't say a word the whole time, working onto make the perfect pattern. With his arms tied up he couldn't stop the vampire from working the thick handle of the whip down the front of Trevor's pants. It pressed uncomfortably, the pants barely having enough space for what was already there let alone a whip handle.

"That's a family heirloom, and it's killed better than the likes of you, and it's seen less than the likes of you die too," said Trevor. "Show some fucking respect."

He grunted as the vampire jammed it down further. Trevor threw his head forward, trying to headbutt them. It was just a matter of them stepping aside to avoid the attack, and Trevor ended up falling off the bed. The handle combined with the bodice made it nearly impossible to bend forward at the waist, and so Trevor was flat on his face on the floor.

The vampire picked him up by the back of the chains, and as his weight transferred onto the ones that bound him at the front, he felt a mild burning sensation. The handle seemed to be fine, and Trevor cursed at his ancestors for not making the Morningstar impossible to be picked up by monsters.

Then again, he thought as his cock was jabbed once more with the handle, at least the handle wasn't trying to burn everything off. Some small part of him had hoped to continue the Belmont line, and had been heartened to know that the Speaker prophecy had foretold it.

The Speakers were wrong. He couldn't continue the line, not like this. He was in this half-human, half-vampiric state, with his own goddamn whip being used in his own torture. Trevor could see no way out, no future in which the Belmonts continued.

And of all the people to continue this line, why did it have to be him? He was of the same stock as his brother and sisters, but he was not the same as they had been. He was absent of magic. He was temperamental. He had been an _accident_. He wasn't expected to inherit, maybe marry off to some more adventurous aristocrat's daughter or perhaps even not marry at all to keep the family tree clean and easily tracked for inheritance and responsibility.

The point was, Trevor didn't know what to do. He was too young to have even started the more complicated matters of running a household when his family were all burnt alive in the Belmont estate.

Trevor had been such an unknown factor that the mob that had done the deed didn't even know he existed.

As the chains of the Morningstar bit into his skin, Trevor was reminded of all this and every single failure that had led him to this point.

He was tired, weakening against Dracula's influence, and his pain now was only one more in a pool of fuckery that Trevor felt no one person should endure and yet he had anyway. He was angry at Dracula for so many things. The one that stood out the most was the sense of entitlement Dracula had from his anger.

And Trevor understood.

He'd wanted to kill everyone in that mob that let his family burn. He'd wanted to kill everyone. His anger blinded him to who was truly responsible. Trevor had wanted revenge. Fuck just having your wife killed – Trevor had nightmares of the screaming of his family, every voice easily picked out and identified: his father Gabriel, mother Isolde, and his eldest brother Christopher all the way to his sister Eve born three years before him. Jenefer had been engaged. Beatrix was inundated with marriage proposals. Christopher had moved his new wife into the east wing, as was traditional for the eldest Belmont child, and Trevor hadn't really understood what it meant to be an uncle but he had been pleased to know he wouldn't be the youngest anymore. Cecille had been been pleased that the Belmonts all spoke French, a comfort so far from her native home, and happily let Trevor do his lessons by her feet. He helped her with her Wallachian, and she helped him with his French.

And they had all burned for no other reason than the Church wanting their archives and when refused, they had turned to excommunication and inciting a riot amongst the peasants to burn down the estate. As if that would save their crops from the crisp, scorching heat of summer, when it was nothing more supernatural than a series of bad years.

Nobody had stopped to think for even a second – the Belmonts didn't want the people to not make their rent, to die in the fields. If they had that sort of magic to alter reality, then they would have put on perfect weather, or at least enough rain to survive.

Trevor knew loss.

He _knew_ it. Intimately. Forcefully. Every inch of his body and soul had been reforged in that fire, and he didn't know how he had survived with only a cut on his eye, but he had.

And here was Dracula wanting to destroy the world in his grief and punish people who weren't even on the same continent as him?

No. Fuck that.

Trevor ignored the pain in his feet, his throat, his chest, the bite of the Morningstar against his skin, the hiss of silver as it rendered marks against his humanity, and twisted around in this vampire's hands, who had no right to even look at him.

They dropped him. He swung out with his legs, and they laughed, ducking out of the way, only to catch Trevor as he flung his full body weight against them.

They tossed him back as easily as a wooden doll. Trevor felt the bed crack underneath him, yet no pain blossomed, except that which already bound him in his fury.

He pushed himself up, arms straining at the bindings that kept them behind his back.

"Little Belmont, little Belmont, what do you think you're going to do? Suspended between life and death, human and vampire, you can only go one way. You have a taste for blood, you are becoming his best plaything, his best victory. How many of us do you think your family has slain? Do you think they'd have mercy for you?" asked the vampire. "For us?"

"I am not one of you, yet. I have not drunk of your master and kept it," snarled Trevor.

The vampire chuckled, collecting the plate and goblet as if Trevor were no more of a threat to them than a baby.

"You really thought you were only given wine today? That the food and water you've been eating and drinking is the same as his Forgemaster's supply? You are a lovely, handsome fool, Belmont."

They found the chain which Trevor had been led around on and pulled at it.

"Come, lovely fool, it is time to become our master's prize victory."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again for reading! I am overwhelmed by your support. This fic has a long way to go - it's not just Trevor being turned, but the aftermath too, so you have plenty to look forward to.
> 
> I would try to reply to each comment individually but I feel like I could satisfy all of you better by keeping up the chapters on a semi-frequent basis. I'm writing all of this on my phone to and from work, so it's really a commuting fic. If you spot any bizarre spelling errors, it was autocorrect. Let me know and I'll fix it up.


	11. Chapter 11

The court was watching as Trevor felt the changes to his body take over him.

Dracula had bitten him, multiple times, teeth sinking through cloth and skin, making his shirt stain like wine had been carelessly mopped up by it. Every bite was like a kiss, an invitation into ecstasy, one that Trevor found harder to resist each time. Between his whimpering and moaning, and the rattling of chains as he quivered, Trevor was nearly undone as Dracula undid the collar and the length of Morningstar whip around his throat, the relief of it peeling away sweet on his neck.

He tried to jerk away when Dracula's teeth grazed the side of his neck. The skin there was soft and supple thanks to Chō's efforts. The vampire that had brought him out was nowhere to be seen and Trevor was beginning to think he'd hallucinated them.

Maybe he had. How he'd ended up doing his own bindings was a mystery since it would be impossible for him to do. Maybe he'd simply imagined that a much more powerful vampire had appeared when it was simply a servant torturing him.

Trevor had noticed that the Morningstar barely left a mark on Dracula's hands, as if it were a mild annoyance than a Belmont relic. No wonder they hadn't been able to defeat him. They had been so certain, and now Trevor was caught in Dracula's teeth.

There was a sting, expected but painful, there for a second before pleasure seeped into Trevor as Dracula took his final bite. Even though he was dizzy from bloodloss, weak from exhaustion, Trevor tried to claw Dracula off.

The pleasure was too much, drawn out by the pain and sweetened by compulsion, and Trevor felt himself going limp in Dracula's arms. He was horrified and aroused, wanting and not, and when Dracula tilted his head in offering, Trevor felt the bloodied version of himself sink into him and lean forward to press their sharpened teeth against Dracula's neck.

Trevor drank until Dracula twisted Trevor around and forced him to stand before the court. Dracula's blood was sticky on Trevor's face from feeding, and Trevor's legs quivered before he fell to his knees.

His body was hot and cold, washing over in him in extremes, neither a salve to the other. The world was spinning with detail, everything becoming more crisp and fully realised than before. Colours he hadn't known existed started to bloom. 

No wonder Dracula kept his castle so muted, thought Trevor, staring at the stone under his hands, the tiny fragments of mineral showing flecks of green and blue. The baths had to be a nightmare, and Trevor dreaded going back even more.

He closed his eyes, fists clenching into the edge of the top stair to Dracula's throne. It cracked.

The Morningstar burned hotter, smoke rising from where it touched his tainted skin. He coughed, the scent of his own burning skin disgusting, thick in his nostrils. He tossed his head, trying to loosen the rest of the Morningstar from his body. It clinked with a merriness that had no place in the hall of the vampire court.

"Show me your teeth," came Dracula's voice.

It came from inside Trevor's head. He still had his eyes closed, a foolish move for a human, but his hearing was becoming more attuned to his world by the minute, so he was certain it was inside his head and not outside.

The silver in his shoes and bodice stung just as badly, and Trevor was certain he'd start to bleed if he tried to walk.

He opened his eyes when he felt Dracula's firm hand pull him up by the chin, forcing him onto his feet. Opening his mouth to protest, Trevor realised too late this was exactly what Dracula wanted as one long, clawed finger eased Trevor's lips back.

"You've held out longer than anyone I've seen before, Belmont," said Dracula. "As expected of your nature. But no amount of Belmont blood will save you from this fate."

He traced the length of Trevor's teeth, and gently pressed down on his upper gums to force Trevor's fangs to extend.

"You have been so elegantly shaped, but it took shedding your human form to realise that potential."

Trevor keened, wanting to tear away but wanting his sire's attention, his praise, his love. The part of him that was Belmont wanted to snap his teeth down, the part of him that was Dracula's wrestled with this thought. They came to a compromise as Trevor twisted away, tears coming to his eyes.

He hadn't wept in so long that he had forgotten what it felt like. Startled and unpracticed, he didn't protest when Dracula swept him off his feet and gathered him into his robes as easily he would a child.

Trevor brought his arms around Dracula's neck, his chains falling away, and cried, softly whispering, "My master, my sire."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You thought Sypha and Alucard were really going to get there in time?


	12. Chapter 12

As Dracula guided Trevor into the rooms that had unofficially become Trevor's chambers, he let the compulsion weaken and fall away. It would take maybe an hour or two for it to fade entirely, and in that time the pleasure of watching Trevor come back to his full nature of Belmont, monster hunter now monster himself, would be more than enough to revitalise Dracula's confidence in his plan to destroy the man entirely.

Burn the man, keep the weapon.

It was surprising that no other Belmont had been captured and turned in some way - there were certainly enough creatures out there that would revel in having a Belmont pet. The probability of Trevor being the first to be too slow, too unfortunate to get out of the way in time seemed low. The Belmonts were pragmatic: it was more likely that any bitten, cursed, or otherwise turned hunter would plunge the knife into their own heart, or failing that, hand the blade to the head of the family.

Despite everything, and his careful tracking of the Belmont line, Dracula hadn't penetrated all of their secrets. He knew about their archive, but how to get to it was another matter. His servants had been destroyed breaking into it, and no doubt there would be other traps waiting for anyone not welcome. It was far away now, the castle having been moved several times.

Landing on the archive again would likely crush it. Even though it was dedicated to the eradication of vampires and other non-human creatures, Dracula was reluctant to remove such knowledge from the world. It was a collection he'd rather have in the castle. Perhaps when this was all over, he'd go back at a safe distance and have it transferred into his own library, sending the Belmont first to deal with any traps.

The Belmont – Trevor – came to his senses in an hour, faster than Dracula had expected although not entirely outside of the realm of possibility.

The first thing Trevor did was jerk as if coming out of a nightmare, screaming his horror as he finally recognised what had happened. The second was launching himself at Dracula, who neatly stepped to the side in cool observation.

"Do not hurt me. Do not harm yourself. You are mine, do you understand?" commanded Dracula, layering on his mesmerising abilities thickly for these two instructions.

There was a quiver, an aborted shaking of brown hair, when Trevor bit his lip, fangs making it bleed, and nodded.

"I understand."

"You may wander this wing of the castle freely, but you are not allowed into my suite, or to harm any of my generals."

"Yes," said Trevor, fists clenched with impotent fury.

"Other fledglings, however," said Dracula, pausing to make sure his wording was exact. "If they attack you, you can fight back. If they try to kill you, you can kill them. But only if they make the first move. The generals may want to play, but they will not play with the intent to kill. You will let them play."

He laced each word strongly with his influence, letting the words settle between them, sinking into Trevor. It was both difficult and easy to bring Trevor under heel: there was the natural Belmont fight that persisted even now, and the natural effort to please his sire that was at its strongest after being freshly turned.

"Yes, my lord," said Trevor, and even as the words slipped out he looked pained.

Dracula pressed on his bond with Trevor that had been forged as a result of his turning. It trembled but didn't break.

"Yes, my lord," repeated Trevor, louder.

He blinked sleepily, turning his chin up at stare Dracula in the eyes.

His eyes were like the endless blue of a summer day. Deep, intense, a blue that was so familiar to Dracula that he could pick out a Belmont child even if it was swaddled in amongst a hundred others. Dracula remembered Leon, briefly, and saw those same eyes in Trevor.

Trevor's were not the same shape – Leon had always looked more child-like, big and round – but that blue was there, and would now never fade with age. The texture of their hair was the same, Trevor's sessions with Chō easing his grubby, stiff hair into soft waves that fell past Trevor's shoulders, longer than Leon's, darker, and yet the same. His clean shaven face made him look his age – a man barely in his mid-twenties.

Leon would be rolling in his grave. Every Belmont ancestor would be. Trevor was stained in blood, dried flakes peeling away from the corners of his mouth. His pink tongue, obscenely bright against the darkness of the dried blood, darted out to lick the corner of his mouth reflexively.

Dracula summoned a servant.

"Bring the copper bath, the mirror, and the Belmont's court robes. It's time we start dressing him to befit his new rank in life."

The servant nodded, bowed, and scurried to serve their master's wishes.

***

The mirror was bronze, not silver backed, and so Trevor could see himself in it.

He had been given some semblance of privacy to bathe for the first time he had been captured. Dracula had undone the magic on his bodice and shoes, and then left him with a steaming copper bath full of water and an array of soaps and lotions, creams, perfumes, and brushes.

"I am certain that Chō will have drilled in what to do with all of these by now," said Dracula.

He vanished as easily as the steam into the air. Whether he had truly gone or was hiding somewhere for some perverse pleasure, Trevor didn't know. It was a matter of trusting that he had and trying to enjoy the few moments alone before someone inevitably came to dress him.

The water rippled as Trevor slipped in, groaning as his pains were eased. His silver injuries hadn't started to heal until the bodice and shoes were off.

He was a mess. He didn't need the mirror to know that. But he looked anyway.

The colour was tinted by bronze, so he appeared darker than he actually was. His skin hadn't changed from its light olive undertone, made pale by being confined to the castle. He couldn't tell what colour his eyes were and he doubted anyone would tell him if he asked.

When he opened his mouth, barely, a tiny puff of air as he exhaled (even though he didn't technically need to), he could see the hint of fangs behind his lips. Trevor pressed his mouth closed into a thin line.

His hair was longer, he knew that, but the amount it had grown was startling. It hadn't been this long since he was a child. From the length, and the knowledge of his own trimming habits, Trevor estimated that he had been held captive for two months.

It didn't feel like that. Everything had blurred together into one endless night, jostled occasionally by the movement of the castle.

Two months he'd held out.

Two months he'd waited for Sypha and Alucard to come.

Trevor finished bathing without looking at the mirror, a momentous task considering how desperately he wanted to know he was still himself. Except he knew he wasn't. Dracula had him as an enthralled fledgling. He wanted to disobey, but he couldn't.

His bloody self was one and the same as his own body, a vampiric instinct being carved into his veins and mind.

Drying himself off, Trevor looked at the fresh clothes before him. Hose, trousers, shirt, jacket, shoes. The jacket and trousers stood out as unusual – the fabric seemed familiar, as if he had seen it before, yet the style was foreign with the same energy the candleless lanterns had. Trevor had some notion of where to start, but the masses of delicate-looking laces along the sleeves, neck, and back of the jacket made him pause.

Overcoming his hesitancy, Trevor pulled on the hose, then the shirt. It was a crisp white, loose, lace trim edging the sleeves and collar. Unlike his previous outfits, this shirt was not transparent or nearly transparent. It closed around his throat, hiding everything down to his hands. The style was the complete opposite – instead of showing skin, it hid everything.

 

Trevor slipped into the trousers, the dark brown leather caressing his skin like a lover. It was soft, supple, and fit like a second skin. Having clothes that fit perfectly was a luxury reserved for anyone who wasn't a Belmont. Peasants and villagers made their own clothes, Trevor had been forced to scrounge what he could, and had never been in a place long enough to purchase a tailored outfit. His family's armour had only fit by pure chance, his body growing into it like he was destined to be the same size as his father.

Despite their tightness, Trevor found them easy to move in.

The jacket proved to be a mystery, having more ties and laces than he knew what to do with. The rich, emerald green fabric seemed at odds with Dracula's standards of red, black, and gold, but the trim and elegant, twisting dragons amongst a garden of gold brocade and embroidery left no doubts as to which vampire lord had laid claim to Trevor's throat.

Trevor tucked in his shirt and attempted the jacket. The moment he did, hands came to rest on his shoulders, pushing his hair out of the way, and lacing him up from hem to collar at the back, and working on the sleeves until he was bound.

Trevor didn't turn or jump or flinch, knowing exactly who was behind him, and stepped into the short boots that matched the jacket as they appeared at his feet.

"Now we can present you to the court properly," said Dracula.

Burn the man, keep the weapon.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You're not having deja vu - I reuploaded this chapter after making some changes to it. Might be a good idea to re-read if you saw the first iteration.

General Raman stalked the corridors, her hands clasped over the hilt of a sword. Her steps were entirely silent, the rustle of her clothes easily lost in the sounds of the castle. She examined the engine room thoroughly, then touched the mechanism to make it all work. It remained floating, spinning slowly, and she felt the thrum of electricity and magic working together in harmony.

The castle was Dracula's greatest creation, in Raman's eyes.

After a few moments, she resumed walking, continuing her patrol alone. The others had given their patrolling duties to their troops, and that was a logically sound choice. She had others looping on a more frequent basis, and they often overtook her, but she liked to take her time. Raman found that her thoughts were clearest while she wandered, honed by the routine of securing the castle. She knew every inch of her part of the castle to protect, and so could do twenty laps without ever repeating a route, each lap taking an hour.

The others might find it boring, but she considered the protection of the castle – especially after that sorceress had dragged it all through Braila – penultimate to her protection only to Dracula himself. Making precise, measured steps constructed the maps of her battlegrounds. These had kept her alive fight after fight. She saw no reason to discontinue the habit.

She stopped at a precipice. Turned the sword over in her hands and felt the edge of the walkway under her feet. The sword wasn't hers, but she had chosen to meditate on it. She preferred to use her claws.

The Belmont crest was carved into the ruby that was set in the hilt. It seemed to glow with an inner fire, and she found it amusing that the Belmont family colours were nearly identical to Dracula's. Swap the black for brown, and there you had it: two sides locked in battle.

Raman trailed a nail over the tiny cross in the crest, wondering at the exquisite detail.

How was it that a family so great and powerful could be destroyed so easily?

Complacency.

It had nearly destroyed Dracula too.

His work wasn't done yet.

The Belmont was providing a new project. A new, twisted meaning to his life. He could torment and destroy humanity directly for killing his wife, or he could torment and destroy a man that was part of humanity's last hope. It was a plan more strategic and thoughtful than the last few months, worthy of the mind of Dracula. His grief had clouded him, and perhaps it still did, but with a Belmont pet to train he seemed like he had regained his vitality.

Three months of a new toy had done wonders for her lord.

Raman turned, measuring her steps, and slipped around the corner like a shadow.

Someone was here.

They were hiding above her, bodies tucked against a gargoyle. She couldn't see them, but she could see where a tile had been knocked loose as they had pressed themselves into the tight nook. No doubt they would have seen the sword, made the connection that it was their Belmont's sword - after all, she had stood underneath them for several minutes.

While they had looked at the sword, she had counted their hearts. Two hearts, one softer than the other - the son of Dracula - and one pounding in the chest of his Speaker companion.

They had three options. Kill her, follow her, or take another path. Considering she held the sword of their former companion, they would try to kill her if she remained alone, and would follow if they thought she would lead them to the Belmont. She had seen what they did to Sharma. Unlike her fallen companions, Raman didn't underestimate their power. Fighting two on one? Desperate to see the Belmont again after three months of being apart? They would be starving to defeat her, an outcome that could be won or lost by their famished souls.

General Raman turned towards her designated barracks.

If they wanted a fight, a fight they shall have.

Let's see how well they could fight the Belmont.

She still remembered the first display of the Belmont's skills fondly. They were one and alike, knowing each step to take even as the dance of war changed with every beat.

***

Trevor the man was furious. His soul screamed and ached – he knew what Dracula wanted him to do and he didn't want to do it.

Trevor the vampire was hungry. It had been a week since his turning and he'd been fed scraps of blood to keep him weak. Before that, he had survived two months on small human meals.

Even now he felt faint and dizzy, standing upright by sheer force of will.

Dracula stood opposite him, a war table stretched between them. His generals lined the sides; Isaac, Raman, Chō. Their lieutenants, three apiece, standing behind them like coils, still but ready to assist.

"Some of you may wonder why I have turned one of our greatest enemies into one of us," said Dracula. "I understand your concerns, I have heard them. I would not have considered this a few years ago. A Belmont vampire? Surely they would destroy their sire the moment they could, fledgling bond be damned."

Dracula raised his hand, one long finger curling up in a beckoning manner. Trevor's knee was on the war table before he realised it, his second knee joining it so that he was about to crawl across it to join his sire.

"Stop," ordered Dracula. "Kneel. Knees spread."

Trevor sat back, waiting for his next instruction. He tried to ignore how hungry some of the lieutenants appeared, their eyes flicking downwards to openly stare at Trevor's crotch.

"As you can see, he is unable to resist," said Dracula. "And he is very eager to please. Nine weeks of misbehaviour to make up for, after all."

This was Trevor's formal introduction to the court as a fledgling and here he was, sitting on the war table, legs apart for the viewing pleasure of a flock of depraved bloodsuckers. It was undermining any sort of begrudging respect the generals would have for him. He might have been changed into more formal clothes, but he was still their plaything.

"A Belmont vampire is not just an opportunity for the use of his physical prowess. He has brains. A tactical mind. Get off the table and show them," Dracula directed the last bit at Trevor. "Arrange the formation to attack this mountain range."

Trevor felt his legs unfold and he was on solid ground again, already moving to arrange the pieces. He'd taken their positions all in when he had been brought into the room, and had quietly filed it away. The off chance that it would help was slim. It was worth it regardless. He had noted the terrain, the size of the troops, and had an idea of their abilities. 

No doubt there would be other things that were secret - the horses were clearly a Calvary unit, but were they regular horses or demon horses? The difference could mean an extra 50 miles of travelling time a day.

He'd had a plan for Dracula's war table and had not intended to reveal it. It wasn't even as if he could switch this ability off. Before his family had met their end, he had accompanied them in their own war room. They hadn't called it that. It was a war room, though. Now Trevor was being forced to please his sire, forced to give away all of the secrets that would have given the dozens of villages and hamlets a chance of survival. All abandoned for the sake of fulfilling his lord's desires.

No towns or cities were labelled, but he recognised the rivers and terrain nonetheless. It wasn't Wallachia. He supposed it was another test.

"You intend to march on Carmilla," said Trevor. "You intend to satisfy your anger with her."

Isaac smiled. Trevor wondered if he was upset by being usurped as a planner, but remembered that Dracula and Isaac were in perpetual conversation. It was like a song being played in half bars and pauses – they both knew the tune. Their words to each other were convoluted and tied up in metaphor and paraphrase.

Nobody could hope to understand it.

"As you can see," said Dracula. "He is intelligent."

General Raman made a noise of approval, her eyes focused only on the war table. She slid a Calvary unit further forward.

"They can move further than your average horse," she said. "They have more time to travel at night."

She slid the others forward.

"You are a remarkably adept strategist. How long have you stood there to form a plan? Ten minutes? Five?"

"Seven," said Trevor, compelled to answer.

"And I can only imagine your shame and disgust at helping our side. My lord's hold is exacting and perfect," said Raman approvingly.

Trevor boiled, and wanted to leap over the table at General Raman. She must have sensed it, turning her head to pin him with her a wry, knowing smirk.

"Even now, you can't do anything," she said.

Trevor, to his horror, hissed, fangs extending in displeasure rather than biting out a witty remark.

He looked back at the map. There was something missing.

"Where is your son?" asked Trevor. "He should be with the Speaker."

Like hell he'd give away more information about Sypha than he needed. She wasn't on the map either.

"They're not coming," said Dracula. "Now tell me, how would you pass this valley without ambush, and I will have you fed."

Trevor swallowed, and words spilt from his lips like a waterfall. Even without the food as offering, he had to comply.

***

His first proper meal as a vampire was warm. It was blood, obviously. Trevor had opened the bottle and didn't know why he would think otherwise. He had hoped it was wine, though.

He didn't know if he could still get drunk. What if it was a drunkard's blood? Would he get drunk then?

The point was that the blood was warm and fresh. So he sculled half the bottle in one go. The only reason he stopped is because he didn't want to be sick like he had been drinking Dracula's blood.

He didn't want to think about where it came from. He didn't want to think about who had died to give him this meal. Maybe nobody had died, but it seemed unlikely.

The effects were immediate. Trevor felt his skin warm, his fangs retract, and a flow of life and energy under his skin. He had been starving. He felt less lightheaded, although standing in the tiny boots Dracula had made Trevor wear was still painful. His hands didn't seem as thin.

Trevor sipped the last half of the bottle, wanting to down it all at once. He was just so goddamn hungry.

He nearly leapt out of his skin when Raman chided playfully, "How is he supposed to think when you keep him so hungry, my lord?"

He had forgotten that he was in the war room. It seemed like everything had drained away to focus on the bottle of blood Dracula had given to him. Trevor shuddered. He couldn't afford to forget himself like that.

Was it like that for all vampires? Was the allure of blood that strong? With how the room was eyeing him, Trevor didn't know if they were mentally undressing him or mentally tearing him apart to get at the bottle.

"If I let him feed too often, he becomes unmanageable," said Dracula.

"Let me spar with him," said Raman. "I will work off his excess energy, keep him trained, and you get a docile little fledgling that can stand for more than ten minutes on his feet. A good, obedient pet."

Dracula didn't even have to think, he just turned to Trevor and said, "Remember that you can't kill her."

Raman had her arm looped through Trevor's and was guiding him somewhere unknown before he could even protest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You may have had a notification for this chapter about 24 hours ago. There were a few things making me upset with it so I took it down and added a few lines to establish the timelines better. The opening with General Raman is 3 months after Trevor was captured. The war room scene is 2 months and 1 week. So a difference of 3 weeks.
> 
> I realise I haven't really jumped timelines that much (except for where things are running in parallel in different locations), so that was probably really confusing. However, the narration isn't exactly reliable and it has been jumping around so please bear that in mind as you read.
> 
> Also if you read the original, then you'll know that I've pinned a small scene on at the end.
> 
> Onto the original chapter notes:  
> If you haven't heard [Mr Fear by Siames](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKLWC93nvAU), I would strongly recommend it. Basically the theme of this fic.
> 
> Also, the darling Littlegirlbluegirl has drawn fanart!! You can see the pencils [here](https://littlegirlbluegirl.tumblr.com/post/182471442058/aaaaaah-i-dont-know-about-this-one-i-didnt-do) and the inked version [here](https://littlegirlbluegirl.tumblr.com/post/182496248073/waaahoooo-i-am-so-happy-the-lineart-turned-out-so). It's the nose breaking scene with Chō.


	14. Chapter 14

Raman was relentless.

She personally trained Trevor for four hours a day, two in the early evening and two just before dawn. The time in between was spent with another two hours of training with her subordinates, leaving Trevor with nine other hours to fill. The nights were long at this time of year, with snow falling at night to pile up in pure drifts against the gargoyles and buttresses of the castle. There was time for secrets to be struck, things to be buried until spring.

It had startled Trevor to know that it was snowing. The cold did not seem so fierce – the pain of silver was worse. Chō took two hours for etiquette and bathing. As a member of Dracula's court, Trevor was expected to look and play the part.

Trevor was as difficult as he could be without invoking Dracula to wrench their bond so fiercely that there were more bonds and rules to deal with by the end of it. He wanted as few rules as possible. It made it easier to rebel in small ways.

Dracula made Trevor sit in court or the war room, relieving Isaac to his forge more often than not. Trevor was certain that Isaac had not lost any influence as Trevor would leave the war room with the map set in a particular way and come back the next night to find it had been drastically changed. Isaac was still Dracula's right hand man.

As a Belmont, Trevor admired the subterfuge. On a personal level, he was hoping Dracula would be a little more sloppy so Trevor could sabotage the edges and burn his way to the centre. Alas, Dracula's grief had been sharpened by the betrayal of Carmilla and Hector, and any unravelling threads had been snipped, darned, or otherwise tucked away.

Well nearly. Carmilla still lived, and she had Hector to build her an army.

Trevor wondered if she knew about him.

It was these kinds of meandering thoughts that were going to get Trevor killed.

He ducked Raman's sword, bringing his own up to parry as she went in for a second strike. It clanged, the intensity of the blades letting off a spark. They were only training blades, so the quality wasn't nearly as fancy as one would expect for vampire generals, but they took a hammering and were common enough that any battlefield could become an impromptu weapons rack.

Raman had quickly discovered that Trevor worked best with an array of weapons. His whip was his best, but his ability to improvise was lethal. It didn't matter what he had around him: he would make it into a weapon given half a chance.

She should have expected it the first time, especially since Trevor had used a _scrubbing brush_ as a stake in the baths all those weeks ago. Yet she was caught off guard when Trevor flung a chair at her in their first session, and she was distracted long enough for him to get his hands on a sword.

She had praised him and found that words to warm his face would unfurl his soul to her ever so slightly each time. There mustn't have been much praise in the Belmont's life. After all, he lost his family when he was eleven. Wandering aimlessly and then in aim of alcohol would not have held many words of encouragement.

So she would praise, and he would flush, and part of him would become hers each time, and another part of him would be subdued for Dracula's pleasure.

Trevor rolled out of the way, clutching at his training sword. Then, he miscalculated his strength and went flying upwards rather than a small hop back. He hit a pillar and it cracked but didn't break. Raman lunged at him, and had her sword against his throat, and her claws extended over his face. Neither of them actually touched Trevor's skin - she was always careful to leave her master's prize unharmed.

At least the face.

She had broken more than one of Trevor's ribs, although that was less common now.

"We're done," she said. "I will see you in the morning for the second session. Do not miss your sparring with my guards beforehand."

Raman never turned her back on Trevor, even though they both knew he was under Dracula's control. The bond was strong and sticky, impossible to be rid of, and constricting when he pushed against it. It was the mental equivalent of the bodice he had worn up until his–

Well.

Trevor hadn't seen that outfit for days since capture. His shoes were still too tight, and there was enough silver in them to hobble him if he ran. 

He hoped that he wouldn't be put back in that horrible bodice. The court had eyed him more than once, and a few stray hands had made their way to him when Trevor couldn't fight back. The phantom sensation of it squeezed at his waist and chest, and Trevor paused to lean against a doorway.

His breath didn't come easily, and he forced down air in big gulps, trying to push the tightness away.

Logically, he no longer needed to breathe. But it was engraved into his body as easily as blinking, and his sense of smell depended on it. He continued to struggle, trying both to stop breathing and focus, and to keep the cycle going by choking on air.

His knees fell out from underneath him, and Trevor slid down the doorway, leaning into it. The cold stone did not soothe him. With his forehead pressed against the decorative carvings, he could feel the claws of the inanimate creatures digging into his skin. It took him away from the pain of his chest, but didn't last as it came rushing back.

He groaned, putting his hands to waist. The reality of his situation crashed down around him.

Things stopped swaying as he took note of the fabric, fingering it to feel the texture of the embroidery and the tiny eyelets that laced his sleeves. His waist wasn't being savagely pulled in. His lungs were free to breathe.

Trevor wanted nothing more than to strip his shoes off and wander barefoot, the training session having worn blisters into feet already tender from silver burns. It would have to wait – the shoes would not come off until the end of the night when he was permitted to rest and sleep.

Slowly, he rose, still chasing away ghosts of previous torture, and he stayed leaning against the doorway for another ten minutes.

He was definitely late for General Chō's etiquette lessons. She would not be pleased.

How long would she wait until she came looking for him? Was it best for him to hurry there and beg forgiveness?

With great reluctance, Trevor pushed off the doorway and kept walking towards Chō's chambers.

***

She had him spanked.

Trevor had been a wilful child, but he'd never been spanked in his life. The Belmonts hadn't believed in the act of spanking. Punishments, yes, but always logical. They wouldn't hit a child that didn't understand why it was being hit.

So Trevor was spanked by one of Chō's attendants and then made to sit on his tender bottom for hours. The cut of his trousers meant that the fabric was tight and unrelenting, and he could feel himself bleeding through before he could heal. There had to be silver in the switch they had beaten him with.

"You must never be late to an appointment," said Chō, casually, as if Trevor wasn't being held down by attendants as another one lowered his trousers.

It had hurt. He'd been hurt before. Worse, even. That wasn't what made it awful than most things. It was possibly one of the most humiliating events that had happened to him. Nobody jeered at him or even made a noise. That's what made it dreadful. Chō had trained these particular attendants to be stone-faced, carved from equal parts indifference, quiet, and attentive, but Trevor knew they would gossip to the whole castle later.

The only noise was the swish of the switch as it cut through the air and cracked against Trevor's skin. Trevor refused to scream, refused to beg. His breath hitched more than it would have normally. His mind kept dashing back to the bodice, and then being sharply reminded that this was a different punishment. His heavy gasps were punctuated by Chō's soft voice counting the strikes.

She stopped at twenty lashes. Trevor's skin had broken on the sixth.

Chō, Trevor decided, would die first.

***

For reasons Trevor couldn't ascertain, Dracula took it upon himself to fill the gaps in Trevor's education.

They covered things erratically, in fragments, twirling down threads and rabbit holes. Without people calling him an idiot and a fool, left to his own devices Trevor would read whatever looked interesting. 

Yes, he read slowly. Trevor didn't care. Interesting was interesting regardless of the form it took.

There wasn't much else to do. Might as well do something while he was allowed some freedom. Otherwise he was sure to go insane.

Tonight he stood, still smarting from his punishment from Chō. Somehow it was easier to read while he was in motion. He did slow laps of the outer edge of the library, knowing the path well enough to walk it without tripping.

The library was quiet with vampire or two floating about (in some cases quite literally floating), and it felt like Trevor could be alone in his ordeal. Dracula hadn't shown up, which wasn't to say he wouldn't, and Trevor could focus on something other than heavy philosophy.

So he pulled down a heavy volume that had an eye-catching spine, and began to read.

Absorbed by the Italian (which he could muddle through well enough), Trevor quickly squashed down his discomfort. It wasn't until a hand wandered to his hip that he broke from his leisure.

Trevor's head snapped up. Dark brown eyes met his, slightly higher than Trevor's own gaze. 

Isaac squeezed, harshly, and while that might have not made Trevor wince ordinarily, it bit into the healing welts from his spanking and made his eyes reflexively fill with tears.

"So it's true," murmured Isaac, and he reached into the deep folds of his robes to produce a small jar.

He pressed it into Trevor's free hand, hiding the motion under the book Trevor held.

"You did not deserve what she did to you," Isaac said, voice still low. "Let the punishment fit the crime."

Trevor was confused. Isaac hadn't shown any sort of inclination except maybe once or twice mentioning a strategy in the war room.

"What happened to showing me your 'toys'?" asked Trevor, not sure if he wanted to accept the jar or throw it as Isaac.

"Oh, that would be for killing my comrades," said Isaac.

He ran a finger over Trevor's jawline, then over the scar on Trevor's face.

"But I think you have been punished well enough for that. I can still show you the wrong end of my toys, if you so desire. I wouldn't peg you as someone who likes pain, but we all have our little hidden desires," he continued, leaning in closer.

This close, Trevor could see little flecks of lighter brown in Isaac's eyes.

If this had been another life, another time, another man who wasn't a crucial pillar in Dracula's shit-fucking bullshit plan to remake the world, then Trevor would have draped himself around Isaac's front like a pleased cat, and allowed himself to be taken to Isaac's bed for a tousle between the sheets and yes, some pre-constructed pain in the form of a belt.

As it was, Trevor was still contemplating whether to smash the jar into Isaac's head and found his hand immobilised by Dracula's order not to start a fight unless someone else attacked first. Unless Isaac was to slap him, he technically wasn't attacking Trevor.

In fact, it felt more like seduction.

Trevor stepped away, and Isaac let go.

"You know where to find me if you need more," said Isaac.

And some small part of Trevor wanted to turn around and accept.


	15. Chapter 15

Isaac was up to something.

Trevor didn't know what it was, only that Isaac was definitely up to something. Nobody in this castle was kind out of the goodness of their heart. Every player had a thousand strings tangled up with one another. What knotted mess was Isaac offering?

The jar was a healing salve. Or a cleaning salve. Some cream that kept wounds from sticking to fabric as they healed.

Presumably it was for his tender backside but Trevor was nearly healed from that. Unlike most of the vampires, he didn't seem to heal as fast, probably from a lack of blood to eat, and the persistent use of silver in everything.

Fucking assholes.

He had retreated after Isaac had given him the jar, unsure of what to do next, and gone to his room to rest. A distraction would be nice but sparring felt like too much and reading had been spoilt for the night.

So he laid on his front, trying not to let his thoughts wander as he slid into the mental state that was supposed to have protected him from being turned. Trevor supposed he couldn't fault his ancestors – probably none of them had been held captive and repeatedly bitten, and he had only a fragmented education from his own parents.

It was impossible to keep his thoughts from travelling the landscapes of his memories while his body was chained to the castle.

He walked, feet bare, feeling the dirt under him, hand touching the bark of trees: rough, smooth, grainy, warm from the sun, or cool respite. His own tree, not bare with the winter frost. The greens and yellows filtering down the branches like a natural stained glass in monument to the beauty of nature.

He climbed it. From the top branches he could burst through the leaves and see the estate. The main tower was the focus, acting as watchtower and platform for aerial assault. The rest of the house branched out from there, a house that was built with thick stone and massive logs of timber. There had been a stable further back, and a cottage for the servants that had looked after the gardens and horses. Training fields were both secluded in the sealed courtyard and out where an ornamental garden dominated other lords' properties. Armouries were tucked wherever one might need it.

Trevor had been in this tree when the snakes in priests' robes had come into the house under the premise of seeking a contract.

He had sat with them at dinner, the formal dining room being opened up to accommodate the three men that had orders to crush the Belmont family by any means necessary.

Afterwards, they had claimed the fire was a mistake.

Perhaps it was.

Trevor remembered how they had held a screaming, wailing child of eleven to carve into his face an injury that was meant to brand him as an excommunicant, impure, unworthy of God or the help of anyone who wanted to go to heaven, because one eleven year old boy was poisonous and untrustworthy, a mastermind and the vessel of Satan himself.

He remembered being held, face bleeding, listening to the screams of his family as they burned, watched as a fiery body exploded from a window, running for one of the wells, and falling into it.

Trevor wondered if they were still down there. He'd never been brave enough to look in his subsequent visits.

If he ever went back, he swore he'd look.

He didn't know who it was. His mother? His father? One of his siblings?

Would anything even remain after so long?

Trevor didn't remember how he escaped. Everything was too bright and intense, as if he too had been burnt alive. He only remembered waking up draped over a horse that he must have ridden bareback for fifty miles, the horse aimlessly chewing on scarce strands of grass.

It had gashes up its legs, a burn on one shoulder, and Trevor traded it for a cloak too big for him, a doctor to declare he could do nothing for his face, and some coins in a village he couldn't remember the name of.

He walked home.

Took his first human life in the form of a looter.

Found nothing of his family and buried everything he could of value into caches, his hands so slippery with blood that he could barely hold the slab of wood that he'd found to dig his holes.

Took his first monster life when the looter didn't stay dead that night, for reasons Trevor still didn't understand.

Trevor left the tree, left the watchtower with its proud flags and banners, and wandered the forest of his imagination until dawn.

***

Once they'd actually found the castle, it was easy enough to get back in. Dracula didn't exactly fortify it with exterior walls.

There were guards, which surprised Alucard. They hadn't had guards before. No matter. As long as they stayed out of sight and hearing, they would be safe.

The castle may have changed, but he was still its heir. The corridors and rooms were familiar even if the layout was being reshaped every time he left. He would make it listen.

He had Sypha. With any luck, he'd have Trevor too.

Alucard leapt gracefully into the air. Sypha followed him with her wind magic, having perfected high jumps over the course of their travels. The castle had moved six times, and they wouldn't let it move again.

This time, they would not leave without Trevor.

Landing on a lower roof, they climbed away from the bottom levels to be sure they weren't caught by any patrols in the main entrance. The wind was fierce, snapping at Sypha's robes and turning Alucard's hair into a cloud of cornsilk gold. Digging her hands into the decorative carvings, Sypha held tight, sometimes using ice to stick her hands down.

The higher they went, the more snow they encountered. It was enough to make any regular human falter. Drawing upon her inner magic, Sypha kept herself from freezing with her fire magic. Alucard either didn't feel it or was so determined to find Trevor that he didn't notice.

Eventually they scrambled through an open window, Sypha melting the snow away so they didn't leave any footprints.

"Where do we start?" asked Sypha.

Alucard looked around to ascertain their location.

"This floor was originally much lower," said Alucard. "I know the intended purpose for each room, but where they are is another matter."

"Dungeons are usually underground," said Sypha.

Alucard held up a hand to silence her. Footsteps.

"We need to hide. Now," he whispered, and they went upwards again, hiding in the eaves behind a gargoyle that had no business being inside, but inside it was.

Sypha pulled the last scrap of bright blue robes against her just in time for a vampire to come around the corner. She was one of the generals – Sypha didn't know her name but Alucard surely would.

Beside her, Alucard stiffened, his whole body shutting down. His fangs extended and his pupils narrowed, his face crumpling in anger. It took Sypha a moment to realise what he had seen, but once she had it took every ounce of her self will not to immediately attack the vampire below.

It was Trevor's sword. The one he had found in the archives.

And this vampire General had _stolen it_.

Did that mean Trevor was still alive? And the sword was something to torment him with? Or was this a trophy that had been pulled from the veritable armoury that Trevor had kept on him at all times? It was a good sword, no, an excellent sword, so maybe she was simply using it as her own.

It would be silvered and blessed, so how did she hold it so easily? Sypha's eyes slid from the ornate decorations on the hilt to the vampire's hands. They were bound in heavy gloves, but they didn't seem to inhibit her movements.

The vampire started to move again, slipping away in another direction as she continued to patrol the area.

"Do we follow her?" whispered Sypha once she was sure she could speak again.

"She is bound to head for her troops at some point. It would be good to dispose of her while she's alone, however if we kill her now then the castle will notice," said Alucard. "Which will make it harder to find Trevor."

"Then we leave her?"

"No, we follow but we do not engage. If she has his sword, she might have his other weapons and he'll need those."

Alucard checked the corridor again before jumping down from their hiding place. He caught Sypha, even though he didn't have to, and pressed a kiss to her forehead.

"I promise we will find him."

***

So they had taken the bait.

Raman made another patrol pause and ordered them to have Chō release Trevor from his etiquette lessons. She did this quietly so that her human and dhampir tails didn't catch on that she was aware of their presence. Her soldiers, perfectly trained, nodded and continued their patrol as if nothing was of alarm.

Trevor would be sent to her suite. Hopefully unhindered by any punishments that Chō may have dealt – Raman was still furious about the spanking Trevor had received early on in his new education. It hadn't been necessary to curb him quite so harshly.

Yet it had improved his punctuality, so Raman begrudgingly gave Chō that.

She could hear their hearts. Their master's son may not think he had one to beat with such passion, but the longer she took them on a journey, the more she realised that they were both deeply in love with Trevor Belmont. Their hearts had pounded louder than they knew, each beat a moment in their declaration of love.

Raman hadn't been in love for a long time. Yet she knew what it was and how it would affect them.

She opened the door to her suite and was delighted to find Trevor inside.

He seemed subdued. Exhausted. Whatever Chō had been doing had clearly drained him as he was kneeling by Raman's coffin, and barely even lifted his head in acknowledgment of her presence. Closing the main door behind her, Raman cursed as she noticed how awkwardly Trevor's clothes were sitting, as if he'd lost a lot of weight suddenly.

She knew they were starving him to hone his bloodlust, but Chō had brought out that vicious bodice again.

No matter. They would be rid of it later.

She pulled a rope that sent a message to Dracula's quarters, and to the barracks. The place would be swarming with soldiers in a moment, and if Alucard and his little human sorceress hadn't been able to defeat them _with_ Trevor Belmont, then how could they expect to defeat them without?

Trevor was in no state to fight, Raman could see that now. Yet he would still serve as bait, and he would slow Alucard and the human down long enough for them to be overwhelmed.

"Up you get," said Raman, lifting Trevor to his feet as easily as she would a child. "I have a present for you."

He gazed at her mutely, his bright blue eyes searching her body for clues. She opened her door, gently pushed him out, and closed it again.

Then she waited.

***

It seemed impossible to Alucard that all of the horrors they had seen – from destroyed villages to half eaten children, people wasting away as their animals were systematically killed by fiends or stolen by the less honest – that all of them had been committed in the name of his mother.

There was no circumstance in which Lisa would have condoned Dracula's deep, violent misery.

And Alucard himself could not fathom the depths of his father's madness.

For Trevor Belmont was still alive, standing before him.

Almost unrecognisable except for his eyes. They were bright, angry, and sad all at once, a pain that had been brought to the surface from being alone for so long.

"Three months...I waited for you for _three months_ ," said Trevor.

His voice started soft, deeper and gravelled from disuse, and lifted in volume, cracking with emotion.

And then the soldiers poured in, like a river that ebbed around Trevor and plunged straight down the rocks towards Alucard and Sypha.

Beside him, Alucard heard the displacement of air as Sypha ignited her hands with flame. He drew his sword.

After all, they hadn't expected this to be easy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We made it to the rescue!


	16. Chapter 16

It was a messy fight, like hitting an ant nest and having them all riled at once, biting every piece of exposed skin, and biting a good deal of covered skin too. Frantic, unplanned, chaotic desperation as the problem kept multiplying – not being able to see the end of the mess made it harder to know when to push and when to pull away.

Sypha scorched a line of vampire soldiers, keeping them back for now. Then, she arced one hand above her and one below, flames coming to life in a tight circle around Trevor and she stretched the flames outwards, burning up the vampires that were crowding him.

Then, like Gresit, she opened up an aisle for Trevor to come to her.

Alucard stood up against Sypha's back to say, "There are more coming from behind. We have to hurry before we're cut off."

Sypha nodded.

"Trevor, come on! We're here for you now," she shouted, hoping her voice would carry over the noise of angry vampires.

He didn't move.

"Trevor!" Sypha shouted again.

Alucard cursed behind her.

He whipped around, dashing for Trevor, vanishing and then reappearing behind him. He tried to grab Trevor's hand, ducked a vampire soldier that had leapt over the flames, and sliced off their head. Then Alucard turned to Trevor, and said, nearly losing control of his desperation, "We're sorry. We can be even more sorry now but we need to _move_."

Trevor shook his head.

"I can't leave," he said.

Alucard grabbed Trevor's face, which seemed pale and wan, and stared him in the eyes.

"He's used compulsion on you," said Alucard, studying Trevor's eyes.

He didn't think he'd see them again, didn't think he'd see this man alive again.

Then he realised he had to do what his father had done and force his will over Trevor's.

And then a second thought occurred to him as he kept his hands around Trevor's face: he couldn't feel Trevor's pulse.

"You're–" Alucard started.

Then he swallowed, tried to take in what had happened, and forced himself back to his initial thought of layering a heavier compulsion over Trevor. Whether that was possible was another thing. His father was more powerful, more experienced, and more willing to break a mind to make it obey. If Alucard pushed too hard, then Trevor would shatter and become a husk.

"You left me," said Trevor.

It sounded morose, a black-blue layer of thick velvet emotion that Alucard couldn't find the edge of it to lift off Trevor. It was a veil, heavy and suffocating, except Trevor didn't need to breathe anymore, did he? Except to smell and speak, he had no reason to breathe.

Sypha interrupted whatever Alucard thought to say next, which was just as well since how could one justify leaving their friend behind? Yes, he thought he was protecting Sypha, that Trevor was already as good as dead, that the Speaker prophecy had been wrong, that they would have another chance if two of them escaped – all ash in his mouth, ashen words for an ashen man.

Sypha dashed towards them, striking a soldier on her left and another on her right as they risked the flames to attack the intruders. She redoubled her efforts, raising her fire so high it was scorching the ceiling.

"Come on," she said. "Pick him up and go."

Snapping from the horror that Trevor had been manipulated and transformed, Alucard threw Trevor over his shoulder. Trevor snarled, taken by surprise, and tried to wriggle free, kicking Alucard violently, and clawing at his coat.

This wouldn't have been a problem if Trevor was still human. However he should have been more of a problem than he was presenting. He was stronger than he had been but not nearly the strength he should be if what Alucard had feared had happened had come to pass.

In this state, Trevor was about as clear-headed as he was completely drunk. He looked gaunt - and Alucard knew that his father kept enough blood on hand to feed all of his troops without resorting to starving them.

Trevor was starved and under compulsion. As Alucard found his grip on the squirming man, he also noticed that there was something under Trevor's jacket restricting his movement.

"Sypha, Trevor is–"

"There's no time, we have to go," she said.

And so for the second time, they escaped.

Alucard had enough of a handful with Trevor, so he kept his sword floating as a protector. It was hard to control both Trevor and the sword, so the strikes were unfocused and sloppy. Fortunately it was so crowded that a sloppy cut would cut down one or two soldiers anyway.

Sypha roasted them in their armour, then froze the remaining pieces in ice, using them as reinforcement for her walls. She managed to block off one half of the problem by sealing the door Trevor had emerged from, and turning that part of the corridor into a dangerously slippery cave of ice. It shook with the beating the soldiers were giving it, but it was holding for now.

They still had another troupe of vampires to push through before they could leave the same way they came.

Sypha decided they didn't need to leave through that exact window, erected another ice wall, and then made a ram to blow out an impressive hole in the wall to make her own. There was another room beyond it rather than the open air she had expected, but it didn't appear to have anyone in it.

She dashed in, freezing over a door she was certain led to the angry soldiers she had sequestered into an icy box, and ran for the next one.

Opening it with one hand and holding a ball of flame with the other, Sypha discovered that it was a servant's passage. It went down.

"Sypha, I can't hold him. We need to break the compulsion," said Alucard.

Alucard tossed Trevor to the ground, wrestling with him to keep him down, and spoke with every ounce of force and compulsion he knew how to use, choking on the regret that it had come to this.

"You are coming _with us_ ," said Alucard.

"No," said Trevor.

Alucard glimpsed fangs, and he felt his heart in his mouth.

"Yes, you are," said Alucard, even though he sounded less and less certain by the moment.

He glanced over to Sypha, who was scouring the room for any other hidden doors. She didn't know. How could she know?

Grounding himself, Alucard closed his eyes, tapping into the energy of the castle. It rejected him immediately, as it had the first time they had tried to fight Dracula, and it felt slimy and unclean. He'd have no help there.

Then he felt Sypha lean against him, a thin flame pinched between forefinger and thumb, waving it back and forth in front of Trevor's face.

Trevor's eyes flicked from side to side with it, momentarily distracted.

"Try again," she said.

"Trevor Belmont, you are coming with us," said Alucard, layering and weaving the compulsion out like a net. "Right now. You will not struggle. _You will obey me_."

Trevor went limp, whatever scrap of will keeping him upright and fighting having given over (at least for now) to Alucard. Compulsion weakened over time and required refreshing – his father's compulsion was strong but was clearly being worn away by the sheer stubbornness of the last Belmont. It was much easier on willing subjects.

He had to hope that some part of Trevor recognised that they were here to save him.

Alucard would have to keep forcing his own will over Trevor's until they were certain Dracula no longer had control.

"You are coming with us," he repeated as he picked Trevor up again.

Trevor didn't kick or scream but he was struggling a little. Better than before. It was all they could do.

Alucard took the lead, peeping into other rooms as they descended through the warren of servant's corridors and paths, hidden from the higher ranked occupants of the house.

They passed parlours and bedrooms, libraries and laboratories, strange clockwork machines, and long halls that seemed to stretch on forever with tapestries. Several instances forced them over spindly bridges, clearly built for someone who could fly if they fell. Sometimes they heard rattling chains, animalistic growling, and a squeak of smaller creatures all infernal.

There were members of the night horde about, and Alucard knew their luck would eventually run out. Which was why they had to get out in the meantime.

Every now and then they'd stop, Alucard repeating his order to Trevor and Sypha helping Trevor to ease into a hypnotic state with her fire. Trevor fought less and less and Alucard didn't know if it was his compulsion working or if Trevor was simply exhausted and reaching his limits.

They fought a vampire or two from here to there, the castle on high alert, with its inhabitants scurrying here and there, their armour rattling as they ran to their posts. With so many in motion it would be easy to accidentally run into another few dozen soldiers. They could handle them, they were sure, but the longer they lingered, the more tired they'd become.

This trip to the castle was purely a rescue mission. They'd recoup and plan what to do next, figure out how to proceed, especially now that –

Alucard couldn't bring himself to think it again, his fingers curling into the cloth of Trevor's jacket.

"Trevor, where did they hide your weapons?" asked Alucard.

When Trevor didn't answer, Alucard jostled him. Under compulsion Trevor should have been answering immediately.

"I don't know. General Raman has my sword," said Trevor, slowly, as if forcing the words through quagmire. "Dracula probably."

And that could be anywhere in the castle. They'd have to leave them. They could go back to the archives, maybe find something there, or maybe Trevor would be able to content himself with unblessed weapons until they were able to come back.

"He chained me up with the Morningstar once or twice. Himself. It might be in his study."

Trevor didn't say anything after that and from his position slung over Alucard's shoulder, he could not see the look of dismay Sypha shared with Alucard.

They'd have to unpack that bit of information later.

"Go to sleep, Trevor. I'll wake you when we're safe."

The compulsion must have been working somewhat, for Trevor slumped a little heavier, his restlessness stilling.

Alucard looked around - they were in another corridor, but he wasn't sure how close they were to the main entrance hall now. The castle seemed to be shifting, deliberately obscuring the entrance, putting them back in the same place over and over again with a series of tricks.

This was one he recognised as leading to his bedroom, but he was certain if he found it then they would be trapped. He put his hand to the wall in the attempt to confirm that it was the same corridor that he had playfully run through as a child, and found that he couldn't.

"Nothing looks right," said Alucard.

Sypha folded her hands together, made an elaborate gesture, and muttered something in Enochian before pressing the tips of her fingers to Alucard's forehead.

"Concentrate on the entrance hall," she ordered. "I'll make it come to us."

"Did you just manipulate the spell we used to find the castle?"

"Maybe so. It might not work. Now concentrate."

And so Alucard concentrated.

The castle groaned, something scraped, stone on stone, a squeak, and when Alucard opened his eyes he found that the corridor had a new arch, and beyond that a set of steps spiralling downwards.

"Good job," said Sypha, patting Alucard's cheek.

"You're incredible," said Alucard.

"I know," she said, but it lacked its usual self-confidence in the face of exhaustion and fear. They had come so far.

It was only a dash down the stairs and they would be nearly free. The entrance hall would be heavily guarded, but Alucard wondered if anyone would know of the sally-forth door, or if it would even be there still. When under siege, the sally-forth would be opened in secret to let troops and supplies in and out of the castle, although it had become a secret door for a young, excitable child on a trip into the village with his mother.

Now it would be a secret escape once again.

Alucard led the way, ducking behind the carvings of twisted vines and strange creatures, mammoth statues facing the hall. As expected, there was a small army of soldiers, and Alucard spotted General Chō directing her troops from next to General Raman.

His father was nowhere to be seen. For this, Alucard was thankful. They didn't need to go up against him in this venture into the castle.

The carvings became thicker and thicker as the passage twisted away, turning and zigzagging around other rooms, slowly going upwards. Then they came to the door Alucard had been hoping for.

He opened it.

It was well above any height a regular human could climb to or jump from, and Alucard supposed the castle had changed its location for his mother by Dracula's will.

"You can land this, yes?" asked Alucard.

Sypha looked down, judged the distance, and then leapt.

Alucard sighed, and shifted Trevor so that he was sleeping peacefully cradled in his arms, and also leapt. He floated the last metre down, landing softly next to Sypha.

"Trevor, wake up," said Alucard, whispering it into Trevor's ear.

When those bright blue eyes opened, Alucard swallowed and stood Trevor up, holding his hands firmly so that he didn't fall.

"We are going to run now. It's too hard to carry you and run through the woods, so you must run as well," said Alucard. "Please, I need you – no – we both need you to run."

Trevor shook his head.

"I can't move. I can't leave him," he said, voice still hoarse.

"Now," said Sypha, who had been watching the castle and turned to them. "We must do it now, or they'll catch us."

She put one hand over Alucard's and the other under Trevor's, and stared into Trevor's eyes. They seemed to be the only thing she could recognise. Trevor had been changed in so many ways and every time she thought she had seen all of it, she saw something else new to catalogue.

"Please, Trevor, we love you," she said.

Something flickered across Trevor's face: confusion, realisation, happiness all in one for a moment where Dracula's compulsion weakened. It was there and gone so fast it might as well have not been there.

"We left you. We're sorry," said Alucard, pressing for more of that reaction, wanting to draw it out so it was around them in tangles and heaps, so that Trevor never had to be bound by Dracula's compulsion again. "I love you both deeply. I couldn't bear it if both of you had died. I need you to put one foot in front of the other and run with us."

Sypha pressed a kiss to Trevor's forehead, stroked his hair, and murmured, "I love you."

He looked dazed, but he took one tiny step towards Sypha.

"I love you too," said Alucard, and Trevor took another step.

"I know," said Trevor, and he pushed forward until they were forced to break their tiny circle, Alucard on his left and Sypha on his right. "I know because you came back."

He smiled, for a moment and said, "I know because I love you too."

Then he ran.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Super tasty extra long chapter for y'all since you are all amazing.
> 
> Please note some graphic depictions of injuries - if that's not your thing, tread with caution when the shoes come off

Alucard quickly overtook Trevor's pace, as did Sypha, and they gently steered him in the direction of the camp they had set up in anticipation of bringing him back. Dead or alive. Neither had considered Trevor was going to be undead.

Alucard grimaced as he remembered that Sypha wasn't aware of that last detail. With the dawn slowly approaching they had a few hours before Trevor had to be under shelter, but they couldn't run the whole time. She would need to know why they were rushing more than they would if it was just Alucard as the only sun sensitive member of their party.

Sypha let up first, gasping as the underbrush became too thick for her to step confidently. They had run for a good half an hour. A twisted ankle here would be fatal. While they hadn't heard anyone coming after them, that didn't mean there wasn't a swarm of soldiers on the hunt. Besides, running left a more visible path. They needed to throw their enemies off their path.

Meanwhile, Trevor was limping, his gaze distant as if he didn't quite understand where he was, or if this was real. His shoes looked too small even though Alucard had seen Trevor's feet and they weren't as large as his boots suggested. These ones seemed to have been a lighter emerald green to begin with and had turned black from mud.

Except, Alucard noted, it hadn't rained in some time, and the earth here was a light brown, not black like some of the richer soils he had seen in other forests. So why were his shoes black? Alucard could have sworn they were green.

Sypha was able to slow her breathing as her heart rate came back down from the vigorous run.

"We should keep moving," said Sypha. "And tread lightly. Honestly, it's so unfair you can run for longer than us. You're not even out of breath, Alucard."

She was still a little breathy, her face shining with sweat, and she went to elbow Trevor playfully to get him to agree with her when Trevor quickly sidestepped her. He stared at both Sypha and Alucard like they were dreams and he was the dreamer on the precipice of waking.

"Trevor?" she said, turning when she didn't make contact with him.

Wanting to delay Sypha's discovery of Trevor's condition, Alucard grabbed her by the shoulder to stop her. He didn't know what he meant to achieve. She was going to find out eventually.

Trevor, despite everything, hadn't even broken a sweat, his only discomfort seemingly his feet. A human would be panting, sweating, and it confirmed Alucard's worst fears, even though he'd already seen Trevor's teeth.

"Let go of me," said Sypha irritably.

She shrugged Alucard off and he couldn't bring himself to stop her this time.

"Treffy? You can answer me, it's okay," said Sypha.

She turned.

Trevor stood there, shifting from foot to foot in discomfort, but otherwise unaffected. He dropped his gaze to the ground. He kept his lips pressed together, as if holding back a deluge of secrets.

"Treffy? Why aren't you– Alucard, why isn't he winded? Is it part of the compulsion?"

Alucard shook his head, and turned away, his shoulders quivering with barely contained anguish.

"Then–" started Sypha, but she didn't finish her thought aloud, instead grabbing Trevor's wrists.

"There's no pulse. Where is it? Where's your pulse?"

She tried both wrists, then under Trevor's neck, and finally, she pressed her ear to Trevor's chest, with tears welling in her eyes. She felt Trevor's arms circle her, his own body shaking, and a splatter of dark liquid fell onto her shoulder. She looked up, and Trevor was crying in fresh scarlet.

"Treffy please, Treffy please no," she whispered, as if what would come next could be wished away with the pleading of a good woman, as if any of this could have been pleaded away by the word of a good woman.

"Dracula made me his fledgling a few weeks ago," said Trevor. Then he looked to Alucard and whimpered, "I'm hungry."

His grip tightened on Sypha's robes and he squeezed hard enough that Sypha let out a yelp of pain. Trevor shook his head and let go, covering his nose and mouth with his hands.

"I'm sorry," he said, muffled by his hands.

His pupils were blown. The battle between seeing someone he loved and seeing a meal was clearly affecting his judgement, Alucard thought. They couldn't rely on Trevor to be stable.

"We have blood in the caravan. It's covered too so you won't be burnt by the sun when it comes up," said Alucard, hurriedly putting himself between Sypha and Trevor. "But you can't have Sypha."

Trevor lowered his hands, and Alucard saw a glimpse of teeth, pearly white and sharp.

"I know," said Trevor. "I know but fuck, how do you stand it? She smells incredible."

Sypha could see Trevor's fangs now as she peeped from behind Alucard. She could protect herself well enough, but Alucard had more experience with vampires than she did, and Trevor seemed unsteady and uncertain in more ways than the compulsion could account for. So she stayed behind Alucard, ready to help with fire or ice as needed.

Guilt twitched at both Sypha and Alucard - Alucard hadn't endured it. He had drunk from Sypha two or three times, the most recent being the night before when they were about to rescue Trevor. Only a mouthful or two, since being a dhampir meant he could eat human food as well and sustain himself as reasonably as any human might expect to live on small rations, but it had happened and could not be undone.

They'd probably been fucking when Trevor was turned and the thought made Sypha nearly cry out again to throw herself at Trevor and beg forgiveness. No doubt Alucard had also counted backwards and come to a similar conclusion.

They hadn't had sex every night. Most nights they were too tired and simply made camp. But the fact they had been having sex made the guilt all the worse, like they were selfish for having such pleasure when Trevor was being tortured.

And yet they had been lonely. Solace came from each other in sharing their fears and hopes, and what if Trevor had been dead all along?

Then what?

"We have to keep moving," said Sypha.

They had no time to stand and contemplate what they should or shouldn't have done. They only had hours to reach their carefully hidden caravan, and they had been depending on walking upstream to hide any potential tracks. With Trevor's condition, they'd have to go the long way around, and tread even more lightly. If Trevor was limping then he wouldn't be able to do that, and it didn't appear that Dracula had taught Trevor how to float above the ground. They didn't have time to teach him that either.

Alucard paused. Sniffed. He could smell blood. Not his own or blood smeared on his clothes or Sypha's. Something else. He could smell silver too.

He looked down at Trevor's feet and came to the realisation that Trevor's ankle-high boots were black with his own blood.

"Fuck," said Alucard, then shoved on Trevor's chest out of sudden frustration.

Trevor barely flinched.

"Sit down," said Alucard.

Trevor immediately did so. Alucard knelt, uncaring of the dust that would be on his knees, and put his hands around one of Trevor's shoes and pulled. They didn't budge, and Alucard growled out a curse.

"They're magically sealed to his feet," said Alucard.

Rage overtook Alucard, and he dug his fingers into the upper edge of the boot, one hand either side of Trevor's ankles and tore them clean in half. Trevor seemed to come back to them in that moment, his face twisting in pain as his swollen, bloodied foot was revealed.

Sypha flinched at the noise and lit a small flame to see what was going on. The moonlight was bright, but not quite bright enough for her human eyes to see. Alucard, however, nearly retched as he cut a slit into Trevor's hose, and peeled away the fabric. With his eyes, he could see everything.

He'd taken scabs and skin with the hose and they were now bleeding freely.

"Oh," said Trevor. "Could...would you do the other one, please?"

This quiet, soft, polite Trevor was unsettling. Alucard wanted Trevor to hiss and curse and scream again.

But Alucard ripped the other shoe in half instead, and there was a horrible series of cracks as Trevor wiggled his toes and let the bones settle into place. The second hose was cut off, taking more bits of Trevor with it.

"How come you could do that and I couldn't?" asked Trevor.

"The wearer can never remove it themselves. However others can," said Alucard. "It stopped me from losing my shoes as a baby. I couldn't kick them off but my mother could untie them."

"I'm assuming your mother didn't make you wear shoes too small for you," said Sypha.

Trevor reached down and casually tore off a toenail which was only hanging on by a shard, and flicked the piece away into the bushes.

"No," said Alucard, watching as Trevor pulled off another broken nail and threw it away. "She didn't. Trevor, _stop that_."

"Shan't," said Trevor.

He made direct eye contact with Alucard.

"They're broken. They're jabbing right into the nail bed. They have to come out," he continued.

Sypha stepped in, tearing off long strips of her robe, and slapped Trevor's hands away. She held the cloth with one hand and picked out the last major shards herself, a little ball of fire hovering at her side. Somehow, she summoned the perfect mix of fire and ice to produce a little shower of water over Trevor's feet, washing away the blood so she could then wrap them.

As grotesque as it was, the boots had pressed scars into Trevor's feet that looked like leaves and flowers, with a crescent moon hanging low over them. She couldn't see all of it and she didn't dare light it for longer out of fear a vampire would spot them. They were only on the outskirts of the forest here after all.

The trees were mostly bare, except for a confier here and there, and their limbs twisted to the sky like lost and damned souls reaching for their God's forgiveness.

Sypha wrapped Trevor's feet to keep them from getting dirty and said to Alucard, "Give him your boots. He's not going to heal up until we can get him blood."

Alucard was already unbuckling them, sliding them onto Trevor's legs easily. Trevor was not a small man by any means, except for his feet. If they had really wanted, Trevor could share shoes with Sypha. The only reason Alucard's boots weren't banging around was because of the swelling and the bandages.

"Do you think you can walk?" asked Alucard. "I'll carry you if I have to, but then I won't be able to use my hands."

Trevor stood up, his face schooled to avoid showing how much pain he was really in, and said, "I'll walk."

Sypha extinguished her flame, and Alucard took the lead as they hiked towards safety. The whole thing couldn't have taken more than ten minutes and yet it was ten minutes less to get to the caravan.

Alucard didn't want to think about what would happen if they didn't make it.

***

The walk was hard, the ground uneven and the sound of troops startled them every now and then, which forced them to stop. Trevor lapsed into silence again, his hair obscuring his face whenever they looked over to him.

He was Trevor.

He was not Trevor.

Not the same Trevor.

The shape of him was different, like something broken and put back together; it was still the same thing but the cracks were unmissable.

His hair was longer, wavy, brushed but now carrying twigs and leaves that had snagged it on their journey. The moonlight made his skin seem like alabaster, the warmth from it stolen by the night. When Sypha pressed her hand to Trevor's wrist to make sure he was still there, she wondered how she could have failed to notice how cold Trevor was.

There was something wrong with how he carried himself, stiff and upright as if he couldn't bend over.

They walked, and walked. Trevor was limping still – his injuries needed fresh blood to heal and he was only a fledgling: his body didn't know how to conserve and use the energy from blood, wasting huge amounts on healing relatively minor things, allowing himself to burn through a whole meal's worth of energy to heal a small, insignificant cut from a letter opener. Big or small, it didn't matter, and Dracula had seemed to prefer it that way.

The sky was beginning to pale, sunlight kissing the mountain peaks ahead of them. They quickened their pace, knowing that Dracula's troops would be retreating now that the sun was near.

Alucard ushered Trevor up a small hill, and then down again. With a light grunt, Alucard rolled a massive stone away from the entrance of a cave where their caravan and horses were hidden. It continued for a few minutes before opening to a larger cave system where Trevor could hear roaring water in the distance. Their horses had feedbags and fresh water, and Alucard quickly sealed the entrance again once Sypha was also inside.

Trevor collapsed almost immediately, managing to get into the caravan before simply giving up and lying on the floor.

He kicked feebly at Alucard's boots before deciding that too was altogether too much and dragged a soft bundle of furs that Sypha and Alucard had been using for bedding and put his head on it.

Crawling in after Trevor, Alucard quietly retrieved a firmly sealed bottle that he had been keeping for emergencies. He set this to the side and pulled off the boots and bandages, wincing when more nails and skin came with them.

Trevor hissed but didn't resist, letting Alucard do as he pleased. Sypha cleaned Trevor's feet once more, more attentively now they weren't running away. The bucket was soon dark with blood and dirt, and as Sypha washed, Alucard reached for Trevor's jacket to find the source of the distortion to Trevor's waist.

Undoing the laces, Alucard slid the jacket from Trevor's shoulders, the arch of his spine exposed as Alucard worked his way down. Then the fine vertebrae vanished, hidden by a harder silk bodice over his shirt. Alucard tossed the jacket to the side, and with the same indignant strength that had torn off Trevor's shoes, grabbed the bodice and split it along one of bones that were pulling in Trevor's waist. Trevor, even though he didn't need to, gasped in relief, taking in big mouthfuls of air. 

Alucard paused, noting that Trevor was still quite tiny even without the bodice to add. He ran a hand over where the boning had pressed into Trevor's shirt and felt the thick welts underneath. He glanced at the discarded bodice and realised it had been lined with silver. No wonder Trevor was barely present – he'd been in so much pain.

And then Alucard cracked his emergency bottle.

Trevor was on him in an instant, fangs extending to their full length. He'd twisted around, ending up in Alucard's lap, hands wrapping around the bottle and pulling it to his lips. Alucard let go of the bottle, letting Trevor tip down the whole thing in one go.

Sypha watched from a distance, having leapt back when Trevor twisted around. She still held the cloth that she had been using to wash Trevor's feet.

Trevor didn't spill a drop, lowering the bottle only when he was satisfied there was no more to drink.

His skin began to hiss and sizzle, bubbling up as it pushed away the damaged skin, reknitting the flesh until there were only pale white scars left. The bodice left a vertical stripe every few inches or so that ran from under his chest to just above his crotch, whilst the pretty garden on his feet remained in its perpetual twilight with the crescent moon hanging low near his ankle.

Draped in Alucard's lap, Trevor nuzzled at Alucard's neck, whining.

"I'm not very satisfying," Alucard told him. "You don't want to bite me."

Trevor nodded but didn't move, chin hooked over Alucard's shoulder. This was as close as Trevor had ever been to Alucard. Under regular circumstances he would have been thrilled. Now, he was concerned.

Sypha shuffled forward and Alucard mouthed "no" to her. In this state he could attack and drain Sypha dry without a second thought. In some ways they had made Trevor more dangerous by only giving him enough blood to ward off starvation rather than filling him up.

Until Trevor slumped, falling asleep against Alucard. Fresh fledglings had never been able to stay awake long after the sun rose, and Alucard gathered that it was quite high now.

Shakily, he kept his arms around Trevor, and laid down so they weren't upright.

"I think you should sleep outside," said Alucard to Sypha. "I'll keep him here."

A flash of hurt crossed Sypha's face. She wanted to look after Trevor too. Then it was gone.

"I understand," she said, and took some of the furs for herself and left the caravan.


	18. Chapter 18

Sypha would like to say she didn't cry.

So would Alucard.

That's what they would like to say.

The reality was that Trevor had been through so much that when they looked at him they had to pick apart the image to find anything of their Trevor.

Sypha watched Alucard and Trevor sleeping, standing outside the flat bed of the wagon. Trevor looked pained with his eyebrows drawn tight and mouth ajar. Alucard had him in a tight grip, pressing Trevor's back against his front in the world's most aggressive hug.

Although Sypha knew it was for her own good that she not get too close to a blood-starved fledgling vampire, she couldn't help but feel resentful that only Alucard could touch Trevor. After so long of dreaming for this moment and now she wasn't allowed to be near him? It was terribly unfair, and she thought bitterly for a moment that maybe it would have been better off if they had never found Trevor again to save herself from this pain of being so close and yet so far.

It was only a moment. A thought that didn't hold any credence, only pure selfishness that sometimes had to be thought before dropped to the wayside. Sypha was immediately guilty: she could have never have abandoned Trevor, and no matter what had happened in the castle, she could bear not being involved in his recovery if that's what it took to heal him.

Her desire to touch him again, to feel him again was bright enough for her to reach her hand out, stroking the vision of him rather than his body, running her fingers over his distant face.

Sypha turned away from her sleeping men, and went back to her bed, drawing her knees up to rest her chin so that she could watch the caravan from afar. Her head hurt, her eyes stinging with the prelude to tears, and she could not hold it back anymore.

So she wept, burying her face against her knees, and mourned, holding the pieces of the Trevor that she knew against what she had seen and finding them inverted.

***

The crushing hug was not, in fact, a hug, but rather Alucard's method of keeping Trevor in one place without having to chain him down or use any other equipment. Trevor would wake every hour or so, squirm, and exhausting himself, would fall asleep again.

Alucard would wake with him, and after checking that Trevor wasn't going to try anything, would fall asleep again. The effect of Alucard being asleep was like a corpse – once he stilled, he was as unmovable as the limbs of the dead. 

It had caused more than one problem while they had been travelling, since it was the only real giveaway that Alucard was not entirely human. His teeth were retractable – he'd simply left them out to annoy Trevor – and his eyes could be explained away as a light brown variant. But walk into their rented inn room or peep into the back of their caravan with a bag of supplies to "thank you for the help" and someone would inevitably notice that Alucard was so peaceful as to not move.

At all.

Until his vampiric senses clashed with his human senses and Alucard was up and out of the bed with his nails sharp and sword rushing to his hand before whichever well meaning village grandmother could catch up to what was happening.

Sypha supposed that it was probably less the "sleeping like the dead" and more "moving around at supernatural speeds" that was the real tip off, but the point was Alucard slept like the dead and would reawaken in the most violent way possible.

She watched this cycle of squirming four times before she fell asleep, eventually sliding down onto her bed wishing that she could be in the middle of her two men as she usually was, her tears her only company as they started anew.

A solid thump, and the creaking of the caravan startled Sypha awake, only to feel hot breath on her neck. A graze of teeth touched her neck and a hand gripped her wrist too tight for her to scramble away.

Trevor, above her, fangs so long and sharp that they would surely pierce his lips if he were to close his mouth, his bright eyes watching her with an edge she had only seen while he had been hunting monsters. He was panting, whining and resisting, teeth so close to her neck.

Sypha snapped her fingers of her free hand, bringing up a ball of fire and shoving it at Trevor's face. He jerked back, hand still holding her other wrist, and she watched as Trevor's pupils contracted into slits, like Alucard's did when he was in outside during the day or upset.

Then there was a blur of red and a few strands of blonde hair, and Alucard was on Trevor, wrestling him off Sypha.

"No, do not bite Sypha," said Alucard firmly, mixing in compulsion.

He peeled Trevor's hand off Sypha's wrist, which was surprisingly hard but not gripping her so tightly she would bruise. Trevor snarled, barely there through the haze of bloodlust. It was equally frightening and upsetting, Trevor with his hair splayed behind him on the ground, eyes so cold and unfeeling for anything but blood that Alucard doubted that Trevor knew where he was or who he was let alone knowing the identities of his companions.

Alucard pinned him down, Trevor bucking underneath him before letting out a head splitting screech. It was loud enough that any soldiers nearby would surely hear it. Trevor screeched again. They had to shut him up.

Sypha managed to get Trevor's flailing legs and sit on them, allowing Alucard to sit up, sliding so he could secure Trevor's torso and grab at the hands trying to claw Alucard's face off. It was an admirable attempt. One that in regular circumstances with a regular human Trevor, Alucard would chuckle and tease him until Trevor managed to squirm free.

Alucard put a hand over Trevor's mouth, feeling the fangs slice into his skin by accident. Trevor licked the skin before the wounds healed, his angry thrashing about becoming calmer for a moment.

Vampire blood wasn't exactly nutritious to other vampires, but it could sustain them for a short while. Given that he was half-human, Alucard hoped that his blood would be better. So when Trevor started to gnaw at Alucard's hand, using his fangs to open up long lines across his palms, Alucard let him.

He could feel Trevor's tongue lathing over the skin, fangs scratching him again and again until Alucard adjusted his arm for Trevor to bite his wrist.

Alucard sighed in bliss, Trevor's mouth full of the venom that made vampire bites so pleasurable in the first place. Even though Alucard had resistance to it, the effect wasn't entirely negated. Being a fledgling, Trevor didn't know how to regulate it, instead pumping far too much into Alucard at once. Alucard had once heard it described as "vampire's kiss" and concluded that it was incredibly appropriate given the reaction he was having.

The more it built up, the harder Alucard fought against it, trying not to give into the urge to simply drape himself over Trevor and let go of him. He moaned softly to give himself an outlet, anything to ease the consuming fire that had flickered in his body.

Sypha's warmth against his back reminded him of what was at stake, that if he didn't keep Trevor down then there was very little she could do to keep him away without killing Trevor entirely. So Alucard steeled himself, and took away his wrist before Trevor could drain him any further and unload more venom into him.

Then Trevor stopped, falling limp underneath him. Alucard could feel words mumbled against his wrist, and he lifted it, drowsily, still feeling the numbness of the venom flowing through him.

"Oh fuck," said Trevor. "Fuck. Fuck. No, no, no, no, _no._ "

His voice rose and cracked in distress.

"Trevor?" asked Sypha, moving off Trevor's legs, scrambling around to see his face.

Alucard held her back with one arm, making sure she wasn't within striking range of Trevor.

"I'm so hungry," said Trevor. "I'm so hungry and I nearly bit you."

Then, "I bit Alucard."

"I know," said Sypha.

"I could have drained you," and this was directed at both of them.

Trevor looked to be on the verge of tears, his fangs still out but not nearly as long as they were. If nobody was paying attention, he looked almost human again.

"I stopped you," said Alucard.

"But if you hadn't–" and Trevor turned his face away with shame and horror.

"I stopped you," said Alucard, again.

Sypha could hear the hitch in Alucard's voice, the prelude to tears. Trevor turned back, flinching as a few warm tears dropped onto his face from Alucard's.

"We are not helpless," said Sypha.

Trevor was nearly motionless, chest still rising and falling with the habit of breathing so he could smell and speak, and closed his eyes.

"You are not," he agreed. "But I worry that you will not do what is right over what your heart tells you to do."

This shook Alucard and Sypha to their core. Neither of them wanted to admit that this strangely sage Trevor had struck at the tangle in their plan. They hadn't been expecting this creature that was and wasn't Trevor. Their supplies were for humans and a half-human. Alucard had been feeding off humans only once in a while and didn't have to sustain himself on blood.

Trevor needed a lot more. Like a baby, his body was still figuring out what was what, what had changed and was still changing, and needed more energy than what an older vampire might. He was being slowly driven insane by perpetual hunger, a shift in physiology that also affected his mind. It wasn't a human hunger, it was insatiable, demanding, and intolerable.

They didn't have enough blood between them to sustain a fledgling's appetite.

Beneath Alucard, Trevor started to stir, his momentary relief quickly fading in the face of too many things to heal, and a monstrous appetite.

Sypha watched as Trevor lost his comprehension of who they were and who he was. He was there, but he was not in control. A slick, angry thing of claws and fangs had taken hold.

"Get him off me if he takes too much," said Sypha, and she thrust herself forward, giving Trevor her arm.

He latched on immediately and started to drink, ignoring Sypha's gasp of pain, and then soft cries of pleasure. Like Alucard, she wasn't immune to the venom, going limp.

Alucard allowed Trevor a mouthful or two, then prised Sypha away, keeping Trevor down with all of his concentration.

"Stay," he commanded, hating himself even as he pressed the compulsion thick into Trevor's mind.

Trevor froze, then nodded meekly, whispering, "Yes, my lord."

And both Alucard and Sypha wept again.


	19. Chapter 19

The first night had been the worst. Once it had passed, Sypha was able to gather her senses and think things through.

It had been important to cry. It was necessary and she had no doubt she would cry again before the whole misery was played out. She and Alucard had shared enough tears between them to make an ocean, and Trevor had sat in the caravan, ashamed and unable to even shed a drop.

However she was Sypha Belnades and she wasn't about to fucking roll over because Dracula thought she should. She might have cried and may cry again, but she would not falter. Trevor was _hers_. Even without a prophecy, he was hers. He was hers just as equally as Alucard was hers they were each other's. Trevor Belmont may have been turned by Dracula himself, but Sypha would wrap the bond around her hands until they bled and tear it out to burn.

She would do it with Trevor and Alucard at her side. She would make Trevor himself again. They would kill Dracula.

Sypha strode around the indoor lake, steam rising from under her feet as she took angry steps, letting her rage get the better of her to burn out any sadness that remained. Sadness would come again later. Her anger was more productive to her at this point.

By the time she was on her fourth lap, Sypha had a few vital things figured out.

One, they had to kill Dracula.

Two, Trevor wasn't mentally strong enough to break the Sire's Bond by himself.

Three, they did not have enough blood to feed Trevor.

Trevor was injured and starved to begin with. Healing required fresh blood, something they had very little of. Or rather, not enough to sustain Trevor and keep Sypha and Alucard alive.

If Sypha had learnt anything from her studies in the Belmont archive, then it was that vampires needed human blood. They could live on animals for a while, but fledglings were different. No matter how old the vampire was, they inevitably had to drink from a human.

Which meant they didn't have long before Trevor turned feral. He desperately needed human blood.

"We have to leave," said Sypha when she came back from her fifth loop.

Alucard noted that the edges of the lake had melted, and the soft earth had turned slushy and slippery. Fog rose from Sypha's shoulders, and Alucard could feel the frost she was generating in her chest even as his toes went sticky and hot in their boots form the heat.

"I don't know Dracula's movements well enough to plan an escape," said Alucard. "I know the terrain well enough to tell you there's two potential exits, one of which Dracula's castle is sitting in."

"And the other?" asked Sypha.

"Guarded. Or it will be," said Trevor, moving so silently that even Alucard had failed to hear him approach. "If he can cut off the mountain pass, then Carmilla can't rely on reinforcements from her allies."

He was pale and gaunt, bare feet in direct contact with Sypha's boiling hot soil, but he didn't seem to notice. They flinched, both at his stealth and his appearance. Trevor was satisfied for now, but neither Sypha nor Alucard had enough to feed him again so soon.

"His troops are thinner than they were, but no less dangerous. He will use them wisely, aiming to control the field and flank Carmilla's."

Trevor knelt, putting his finger into the soggy earth, drawing out the valley as well as he could remember it.

"If he has the advantage of height along these ridges, then he could use his monsters as archers - their breath means that they won't run out of arrows. After all, if you can spit fire, then there's no need to learn how to shoot," Trevor continued, marking the ridges.

This was a Trevor they knew. A tactician at heart, he might not have been able to quote the literature of the day, or read obscure and dead languages, but he was intelligent. A man who knew his battlefields. Had only ever expected to fight alone, and so only planned what he could when the odds were stacked against him.

Before Alucard had seen Trevor in action against a mob, he had thought that Trevor was a gambler. A lucky fool, a drunkard so sodden in alcohol that the stench alone would put off his opponents if the constant swaying and dipping hadn't already.

Sypha had known better, had seen fights before, and knew what a man who could fight looked like, even if they were nearly horizontal on the floor from trying to chase away ghosts with too-strong spirits and too much spare coin.

The main difference was being able to fight, and being able to fight well. Anyone could swing a punch. Not everyone could move like they were feather-light, a honed dance of feet across bodies and broken furnishings, stepping past pools of blood, piss, and wine. And it was a special kind of skill to make it look like it was all a mistake, some poor bastard winning by merit that he was more sober than anyone else throwing whatever they could get their hands on at him.

Trevor Belmont was not academic. He was, however, studious. The map he had drawn was almost perfectly to scale and matched with what they knew of the area. Alucard had seen the maps before, but it had been a long time ago, while Sypha had wisely committed as much of the landscape to memory as they had trundled in under the cover of darkness two nights earlier. Stories weren't the only thing Speakers were good at remembering.

"Carmilla isn't a fool, either. This is a battle of who can keep their back better protected. Her troops are more numerous, and better rested. She knows her own territory better than Dracula. No doubt she has all sorts of traps planned for invaders. With her strength, she may even outdo Dracula, and cause any sort of avalanche or landslide, drown Dracula's troops as they try to climb higher. Her castle was not as famed as Dracula's, but no doubt as devious. It's carved straight into the rock of the mountains it perches on. If she didn't have tunnels, I'd be surprised," said Trevor. "She has four towns to feed from, and numerous villages and hamlets."

"Why would anyone live in the shadow of such a creature?" said Sypha, mostly to herself.

"There would be benefits," said Trevor.

He glanced at her, hands well and truly dirty from all of the drawings he was making. He almost looked like their old Trevor. Yet he was too still and pale, and the flash of his fangs over his lips reminded her of their shape in her neck. Sypha raised a hand to the healed bite, pulling the collar of her robes up slightly.

Pain flashed through Trevor's eyes, a subtle tightening of the brow, and he put his focus back to the map.

"I do not know where we are," said Trevor.

"We're-" started Alucard.

Sypha snatched Alucard's hand away from the map. As much as she wanted to trust Trevor, she knew the Sire's Bond could run deeper than anyone could possibly know, and react in unusual ways. Until they were away from the danger of being cut off from the rest of the world, they had to keep the details from Trevor.

There was a moment of unease. Trevor curled his hands into fists for a moment, and then let his fingers unfurl. Old Trevor would have immediately spoken his displeasure. This Trevor folded it neatly away.

"Then I will show you where we need to be," said Trevor, as if nothing had happened.

He put one finger on a mountain pass, the same one Sypha and Alucard had used to enter the valley.

"You came in this way, yes? We must leave in the same fashion."

There wasn't any other way. Lying now would make Alucard and Sypha both look like fools.

"Yes," said Alucard.

Trevor stood up from the map, and wandered to the lake's edge, and washed his hands thoroughly. He picked out the dirt and grit until his nails and nail beds were as clean as a nobleman's who'd never worked a day in his life. It was almost obsessive, his sleeves carefully rolled up, and he didn't stop until Sypha put a hand on Trevor's shoulder and said, "We should leave now. While the sun is high."

"That won't stop him," said Trevor.

He stood up, apparently satisfied that his hands were clean, even as they dripped onto the ground. Alucard didn't know where this obsession with cleanliness had come from. It was new. Unexpected. And ALucard found himself uncertain as to whether he liked it or not. It seemed like a habit for someone else that had been pressed into Trevor, branding him.

"No," said Alucard. "But he will be at a disadvantage. His troops will have to take shelter and leave the guarding to lessor demons and monsters who can stand the sun. Even then, they will be weaker than if they were out at night."

Trevor looked to the caravan, at the thin coverings and worn ropes. It had been enough to protect Alucard, but they hadn't thought they'd ever be transporting a full blooded vampire.

"You forget that I can't go into the sun, either," he said, softly.

"We didn't," said Sypha.

She pulled Trevor along to the caravan and sat him in the back of it. "Stay there," Sypha closed the flaps which were usually left open, and said, "It's not perfect, but it will have to do."

She opened the flap again, and found that Trevor hadn't moved from where she placed him, like he was a doll rather than a living being. He looked like he was carved from stone, not moving, not flinching or breathing. Just sitting there, like he was waiting for her next command.

He jolted in surprise when she pulled Alucard's coat over his shoulders and dropped her spare outer robes over his head.

"Bundle up. We won't let you burn," said Sypha.

They moved quickly after that. Both Alucard and Sypha didn't want to let Trevor catch onto the fact that they didn't know what to do next if the mountain pass was blocked off. All of their plans had been built around the assumption that Trevor would still be human. They had depended on him being able to walk in the sun. Had stocked up on human food.

Alucard cracked the reins and urged the horses to speed towards the pass.

If they didn't make it, then there would be bigger consequences than simply being stuck in an unknown territory with swarms of their enemies roaming the countryside. They would have no access to blood.

And Alucard knew what a feral vampire looked like. What they could do. Even lesser vampires could wipe out villages overnight if left too long to their own devices. Trevor was sired from Dracula, the most powerful vampire in the land.

He was a _Belmont_. The last Belmont.

Alucard knew a little of how powers and abilities were shaped in fledglings. They didn't simply come from nowhere. No, their abilities were amplifications of their own skills, personality, and bloodlines. Combining the most powerful vampiric bloodline with an unrivalled family of hunters was certain to have explosive results.

Sypha kept the horses cool with her magic, and they couldn't ride them hard for very long. Soon, they slowed to a brisk trot, highly aware of overexertion and the rough terrain of the trail. One false move and the whole caravan would slip into the valley, crashing to an untimely destruction. It did expose them to enemies, and gave more time for them to prepare for their arrival. It also wasted sunlight.

Not for the first time, Sypha found herself wishing that they could have wrapped Trevor up like a rug and dropped him over the back of one of the horses and left the caravan behind. The sizzle of skin and a sharp hiss of pain stopped her from trying the idea after a small finger of sunlight had managed to touch Trevor.

They would have to find a better method of transportation. For now, this was all they had.

Sypha found herself quiet, as if speaking her uncertainties would actualise them. Their chances were slim. Yet, they knew Dracula was a sharp a tactician as Trevor, made more devious and cunning by his years of experience, leaving them at a distinct disadvantage. If they didn't reach the pass today, then they wouldn't make it out.

Which drifted her thoughts back into the tangled gnarl of emotions that came with the fear of what would happen if they couldn't find enough food for Trevor.

Turning around wasn't an option. Any blood sources would be hoarded jealously, valuable in an effort to outlast a siege, or simply push through with brute force using fed soldiers. From what she knew of Carmillla, Sypha had followed the logical conclusion that any humans in the valley would now be locked in her fortress. Dracula had his own stores of blood, but not so fresh, kept in the lowest parts of the castle where it wouldn't perish.

She didn't know exactly how that worked, but it was a secret she intended to uncover and use for her own advantage.

***

They arrived at the pass late in the afternoon. The light was dimming fast thanks to the high ridges of the mountains that both protected and trapped the valley. Alucard's keen ears had picked up on rustling a few hours earlier, a noise that only became more persistent and closer as they approached the narrow pass. 

High walls of grey stone funnelled them down the pass. The press of stone made Sypha uncomfortable. She hadn't noticed on their way in, but it would be impossible to turn their caravan around if they were forced to retreat. An attack now would strip them of the vital shelter they needed for Trevor to stay alive.

Sypha had crawled into the caravan to retrieve some food for herself and Alucard, and had found Trevor curled into a tight bundle, nose buried in the thick cloth of her travelling cape.

He was asleep.

Not for long. His eyes snapped open, roaming the caravan briefly, as if trying to remember where he was.

Or trying to remember this wasn't a dream.

"It's okay, I'm fetching some lunch," said Sypha. "You can go back to sleep."

It seemed odd that Trevor could be so strong and quick, and yet so exhausted at the same time. She couldn't imagine him turning feral, though. It felt like too much of an effort. Even with him pinning both Alucard and herself down to feed the previous night, there had been something there, some measure of Belmont iron will that had prevented him from tearing out her throat.

Perhaps it was also love. Most of the vampiric victims she had read about were no more than acquaintances to the creatures that hunted them. It was more of a game, a disgusting game wherein playing with one's food was taken to the extreme. One such journal had described the stench of fear as being a delightful addition to blood, and that a good chase before capture meant the blood was full of oxygen and would practically fill the mouth without effort.

This just didn't match with what she knew of Trevor. It didn't match with what she had seen of him as a vampire.

It was too hard to believe that he could kill her. Lose control.

And yet, his pale, bright blue eyes watched her in a way that made Sypha shiver, feeling more like prey than lover. The longer he stared, the more uneasy she became, and she grabbed some of their supplies and slipped back to the driver's bench, being careful not to spill sunlight on Trevor.

The mountains seemed taller. The path narrower. And Sypha wondered if heading for the mountain pass was such a good idea after all.

***

Unable to resist sleeping during the day, Trevor shuffled back into the makeshift blankets and breathed deeply, taking in the scent of Sypha. He could smell Alucard as well. A mixture of lust and desire. Softer earthy tones from where branches must have rubbed against the cloth. Blood. Washed out monster gore, and the smell of soap.

Like the woman herself, the scents were a juxtaposition. Alucard was much more straightforward, harsh leather, saddle wax, steel. Blood again.

Trevor wondered how long it would take for him to smell nothing but blood.

He felt his fangs lengthen in his mouth, and he growled to himself, rolling tighter around his empty belly. He _would not_  feed from Sypha and Alucard again so soon. He had fed deeply the night before, he didn't need more so soon, he was in control. He had to be in control.

He found himself wadding some of the cloth into his mouth, teeth sinking into the fabric, tongue lathing over the material for any trace of blood. Frustratingly, it was just the smell that lingered, and none of the sweet ambrosia that he desired.

Still, the fabric was better than sinking into Sypha's neck, heat filling his mouth and body, skin pressed against skin, the sigh of air as it left Sypha's lips, the tang of her sex as it awoke with his bite. Her hair was soft against his cheek, tickling his senses, and everything about her screamed beauty and life and perfection, and he wanted all of it. Trevor shifted, and he imagined her underneath him again, hips grinding against hers as he drank from her, licking her neck clean and healed, and then sliding his hands down her robes to unpin and untie, revealing her chest.

It was marked with healed nicks and cuts, light freckles where the sun caressed her shoulders when her robes were off. Trevor didn't actually know what her chest looked like, but he did not imagine it to be like a fine noblewoman's, nothing but pale alabaster. She had the light tan of a young sapling, still growing, loved by the earth, nourished by the sun and rain.

The carriage rode over a bump, and Trevor buried himself into his fantasy further, unable to stop. It was like he was possessed, his desire burning brighter and brighter until he couldn't tell if it was his hand rubbing at his trousers or Alucard's, his breath making Sypha's robes wet or the dhampir's. It had never been like this in Dracula's castle, this intensity of need and lust and want, and it was better and worse at once that he could smell them and couldn't touch them. The sun was still up.

And Trevor had never felt hungrier.

"Please," he whimpered. "Please stop."

Alucard must have heard, for the flap opened and Trevor ducked into the corner, his shame hidden by the layers of fabric around him.

"Trevor?" asked Alucard, his voice deep and soft, and cultured, and fuck, it was even more beautiful now that Trevor could _hear._

"You have to leave me. You have to run," said Trevor.

He could feel his hand still moving under the robes, pressing on his aching cock. He couldn't stop himself.

"No, we will not leave you now," said Alucard. "Never."

Then Alucard stiffened, and Trevor knew he had felt the same thing as Alucard. The sun had dropped behind the mountains, shading the passage in an early twilight. With it, the Night Horde came out of hiding, screeching their presence rather than pressing their advantage.

Trevor lunged for the caravan flaps. The Night Horde was cocky. If they wouldn't use their advantage, then Trevor would use his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for the wonderful comments on the last chapter. I really appreciate every single one of them. The last few months have been a bit of a whirlwind for me - I've had that dang fatigue return, and a whole bunch of other IRL things happen, so I hope that this makes up for it somewhat.
> 
> Also Casie-Mod did a stunning piece of Vampire Trevor fanart for this fic. Please check it out, it's gorgeous - [Burn the Man, Keep the Weapon](https://casie-mod.tumblr.com/post/183588134944/burn-the-man-keep-the-weapon-lllustration-for). I feel honoured that two artists have put their skills towards gifting art for my fic, and that this fandom is enjoying this story as much as I enjoy writing it.


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